


The Girl in the Garden

by hesterbyrde



Series: Friendship is Unnecessary [13]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Depression, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Everyone Is Poly Because Avengers, Fix-It, Grief/Mourning, Hand Jobs, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Multi, Oral Sex, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Post-Canon Fix-It, Self-Sacrifice, Shower Sex, Threesome - F/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-10
Updated: 2019-07-22
Packaged: 2020-04-24 03:49:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 40,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19165231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hesterbyrde/pseuds/hesterbyrde
Summary: Natasha sees it before the end. Whether it was the magic of the temple allowing her a glimpse of her good work, or just the last wishful gasp of a dreaming and dying mind, she can't say. But she sees a rolling wave of brilliant white light rushing up to the temple's height, and then there's Clint on his back in a pool of water. He's some distance, she knows, from where she now lies in a broken heap. His eyes are closed, but he is breathing. And there is a muted, brassy glow in his left hand.And she feels a fleeting flicker of pride. It's a single stroke of black across lines and lines of bloody red. This part of the plan, at least, had worked. She had bought them a chance to set the universe right.Whatever it takes.She had been what it took. Her life for theirs. For his. And it had worked.But her last thought, before the slipping blackness swallows her whole, is Steve.Let him be okay…Please…





	1. A Garden You Never Get to See

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Monday, everyone!
> 
> First of all, before anything, let me give a big old honking SPOILER WARNING to anyone who has not seen Avengers: Endgame. This fic takes place during the last half of Endgame and onward. Please don't let me accidentally spoil anything for anyone... though at this point, if you've read the blurb... :)
> 
> Well... we're finally here. The fix-it fic for "Friendship is Unnecessary." First, thank you all for both your patience and your enthusiasm for this fic. I was seriously expecting Steve to die and had a few different contingencies for how to deal with that in a fix-it, but... yeah. Something something, best laid plans, something something. (I'm pondering publishing a couple of scenes I already had written... just for a lark. We'll see.) I basically had to start from scratch on this one after I saw Endgame. So I appreciate your patience with me while I endeavored to get this right.
> 
> A few things to know... The fic is finished and will update each Monday. Please be warned, I take this to some dark places in the name of plot and character development. But to quote a certain Asgardian, who may or may not make an appearance, "The sun will shine on us again."
> 
> The fic title is from the song "The Girl in the Garden" by SJ Tucker (look her up! She's an indie!) and this chapter title is from "The World is Wide Enough" from the musical "Hamilton." I felt a little self-conscious when I chose this chapter title, but honestly... driving home from Endgame, that was my take-away, y'know? I'm squarely on team "I don't mind the deaths but they handled Natasha's very poorly." I didn't think everyone was going to make it... nor should they. And I kept coming back to the idea that Tony and Thanos both took up gardening after the Snap. And so did Natasha in a way.
> 
> Anyway... I'm off on a tangent.
> 
> Thank you to musicnerd88, TenaciousAeolai, and KaminaDuck for beta reading! And check out KaminaDuck's take on a post Endgame story... find out what Steve gets up to back in 1945, if that's your bag.
> 
> But most of all, thank you. Thank you for your support, and your enthusiasm for this little project. So many of you have contacted me and I've been overwhelmed in the best way. Thank you so so so much. This series wouldn't exist were it not for you guys reaching out and asking questions. If you want a testament to how comments influence a writer, go read the foreword on "What Strength I Have's Mine Own." I never intended this to be more than a one-shot comfort fic after Infinity War. But here we are over a year and 100k words later. Thank you. Love you guys 3000.
> 
> And now... let's fix some shit. :)

***

_Legacy. What is a legacy?_   
_It’s planting seeds in a garden you never get to see._   
_I wrote some notes at the beginning of a song someone will sing for me._   
_America, you great unfinished symphony, you sent for me._   
_You let me make a difference._   
_A place where even orphan immigrants_   
_Can leave their fingerprints and rise up._   
_I’m running out of time. I’m running, and my time’s up._   
_Wise up. Eyes up._   
_I catch a glimpse of the other side._

 

***

Just a kick of one foot and a jerk of her hand, and she's falling. It's not exactly how she wanted to go. Certainly not how she envisioned it, but she knows there are worse ways to die. Especially for someone like her. This will be quick at least. 

But it's not all that quick. It had to be messy and violent first. As she slipped from his grasp, her forehead still tingled with warmth where Clint had pressed his face to hers. From when they had both closed their eyes and breathed their last breath together in this world. She'd called him an idiot, and he'd accused her of being decent. It was as good as any "I love you." in her book. There were smiles and puff of mingling breath blown away in the wind. Twining fingers wrapped around stern hearts.

That was the way it was supposed to go, until he'd thrown her to the ground and made a run for it, the idiot. She hadn't wanted their last touch to be a rough one. She was supposed to save his life gently. It was sad. She was sad to go, and he would be sad too for awhile. But it was supposed to be a gentle sadness. Not like this. They weren't supposed to part with weapons and wit turned on one another. With skill and cleverness bared like teeth as they fought against each other. Against fate. Fighting to the last moment...

But Clint was being an idiot. Just like always. Just like he had taught her how to be. Just like she is being now at this very moment, or so he's probably thinking. Stubborn idiots, the both of them. But stubborn idiocy had saved the world before. And it would save the universe now. And Clint with it.

And Clint? Clint will be alright. Even as he's staring down at her, fixed in complete agony of heart, she knows this is true. He will be fine. She knows this because she's seen him heal before. From the death of Phil. And from Pietro's too. And from his piss-poor excuse for a childhood. He will heal from this just like he healed from all the rest. She will buy him healing. _Is_ buying him healing with just a little grit and gravity on her part. That's part of the barter, if she's being honest. She will buy him back his family, and he will go on living. Just like everyone will.

But as gravity takes irreparable and irretrievable hold, and she feels herself slip down and down and down beyond all hope of rescue… she feels…

Guilt. And worry.

Not for the handsome face above her, bent in the awful angles of anguish. Not for the man that screams her name from what already seems to be a far off place.

No.

For someone who is not here at all. Someone who is half a universe away and nearly a decade ahead of her.

For Steve. 

And for Bucky…

She won't see them again, she realizes. Won't see the true yield of her sacrifice. She hadn't really thought of that until just now. 

She'd grown used to the vacancy Bucky had left in her heart. She had done her best to trim it with flowers and fond memories. What meager lot they'd scraped out of their pitiful garden plot of far too few years, mired as it was in the thistles of their shared duty and diligence. And in truth, their shared recovery.

But Steve… He had tended his grief with salt and worrying teeth. It was the third time he'd lost Bucky. The third wound earned in exactly the same place. He had encouraged healing in others after the Snap, but all the while he had been tearing at his own sutures. Perhaps… perhaps her sacrifice might yield a balm for him in her absence as well. One she hadn't been able to give him. If it works… and if everything else works and he gets Bucky back, just like Clint will get his family back, then her sacrifice is worth it. 

Whatever it takes. Whatever the risk...

Her risky, risky sacrifice. What if it _doesn't_ work? She suddenly and traitorously doubts, and it's absurdly more frightening than the ground she can sense rushing up behind her. What if they fail anyway? What if she is leaving Steve to face another failure alone?

"See you in a minute." She'd told him before they'd left, a smile on her lips and a playful twist in her shoulders. She'd been so giddy over having a mission. A real mission. Something to do… something to try at last! The crew… the _family_ was back together. She'd been so excited, she hadn't even told him to be careful. She hadn't considered until that very moment that they might fail again.

Poor Steve. It was always poor Steve, wasn't it? She wishes she could see him smile again… one more time…

Give him cause to smile...

Her mind is a jumble of half-formed thoughts as she hurtles downward. It's as if she's rushing to process… to play back memories one last time before they're dashed across the stone floor. Sunsets in Wakanda. Missions all over the world, and her position just off Steve's left. His shield arm. Countless mornings tangled up in sheets and newborn sunlight. Lingering touches. She'd give anything… give her life a thousand times over if she could assure that softness for Steve again. With or without her. 

It will be without her. But he will have Bucky, she reminds herself. If this works.

If this works…

Please let it work...

As the air rushes past her ears she hears a voice in her thoughts. But it's not Clint's. And not it's not Steve's or Bucky's either. But it is a recognizable one… thin and strange and sneering. And terribly out of place amid her other, kinder memories...

_"Your world in the balance and you bargain for one man."_ She hears Loki's accusation… his diagnosis, trimmed in bewildered wonderment. It had been an incision, clean and deep, along the fault lines of all her motivation. And it cuts her now. Deeper than blood. Deeper than bone.

A tear slips her eye and falls upward. Away from her. Along with everything else... falling up and away.

_Let him be okay,_ she prays. A child at prayer after all. To who or what she neither knows nor cares. It's just a last desperate plea to the universe before she goes. _Please. Clint needs the Stone, but I need Steve to be alright. Give him Bucky. Give him anything he needs, if he can't have me. Help him be strong… don't let him doubt..._

_Please…_

She doesn't even feel the impact. It's as if she's there one minute and vanished the next. Gone in a harsh, wet crack of bone on graven rock. All thought and movement departed. The magnificent clockwork of her mind finally stilled. Given up in favor of a far more treacherous and incalculable power. 

Natasha sees it before the end. Whether it was the magic of the temple allowing her a glimpse of her good work, or just the last wishful gasp of a dreaming and dying mind, she can't say. But she sees a rolling wave of brilliant white light rushing up to the temple's height, and then there's Clint on his back in a pool of water. He's some distance, she knows, from where she now lies in a broken heap. His eyes are closed, but he is breathing. And there is a muted, brassy glow in his left hand. 

And she feels a fleeting flicker of pride. It's a single stroke of black across lines and lines of bloody red. This part of the plan, at least, had worked. She had bought them a chance to set the universe right. 

Whatever it takes. 

She had been what it took. Her life for theirs. For his. And it had worked.

But her last thought, before the slipping blackness swallows her whole, is Steve.

_Let him be okay…_

_Please…_

***

She's next conscious standing on her own two feet. She doesn't remember standing. It's as if she simply materialized upright… and in a very strange place...

But a very familiar one as well...

It takes her a second to recognize it. For the first handful of seconds, she's just reduced to blinking fretfully in the hazy amber light that bathes the world around her. It pours in through the window to glint off walls of gleaming tile and glass. But once her eyes adjust, she realizes she's standing on the mezzanine of the Avengers HQ, just outside the equipment bay. 

After turning in place to blearily gain her bearings, she quickly moves to look out the window, footsteps falling dully on the tile. It's the window she remembers, but it's not the usual view. There's no hangar, or runway, or treeline beyond the thick glass. No glittering river, or grassy training yard. Instead, flat water stretches out around the building, met at the far reaches of her vision by a tawny overcast sky. The water ripples, but only a little, as if moved by an unseen wind. 

She walks the mezzanine, listening carefully and taking in every detail. It's deathly quiet, making her footsteps fall like hammer strokes on the tile. She carefully looks out every window and finds that all around her the horizon seems to be the same. Not a feature or landmark in sight, with water stretching out into the distance on all sides.

Frowning, Natasha steps out into the equipment bay. It's completely empty as well. Completely. No giant time machine. No vehicles, or weapons, or any equipment of any kind. And no people. Not even a sign someone might be around, like an abandoned coffee mug or duffle tucked in a corner. It's just a giant glassed-in room which showcases more of the same eerie view outside. Gently rippling water meeting the arched canopy of the occluded sky. 

And it's silent, in a way that HQ never was. Not even in the dead of night when she would prowl around unable to sleep. Someone was always around in the old days. But even after the Snap, at least the air conditioning hummed. Lights and computer equipment buzzed. All signs of life and presence. But there doesn't seem to be anyone here now. No power. No belongings. No one moving about. Nothing.

Just her.

Curiosity tugs at her, and she steps out the side door to find that the water comes right up to the edge of the steps. Gingerly, she makes to wade out and test the depth, expecting to sink in at least up to her ankles. Surprisingly, she finds it's barely more than an inch deep, at least for the first few steps.

But she can't actually feel it, she realizes. It should have soaked into her boots, but either the weatherproofing is better than she remembers on this tac suit, or something's fishy. She bends, experimentally scooping a little of the water into her palm, finding she can't really feel it beyond an impression of lingering coolness, nor do the droplets stick to her skin. She stands again, wiping her palm against her pant leg if only out of habit. Maybe it's not water? 

Or maybe she's not real anymore...

The more she surveys her surroundings, the deeper her frown cuts into her face. She's never really considered the possibility of an afterlife, but this is certainly nothing like any notion of it she's ever heard of. But perhaps this wasn't truly an afterlife. Perhaps this was the fate of the one sacrificed for the Soul Stone. Could be worse, she supposes. To be trapped in the only home she ever really made for herself. Even if it's devoid of the things that made it home. Perhaps this is the punishment for her arrogance and the reward for her bravery all rolled together in one. 

"Natasha?" 

Her name falls softly on her ears. She pivots in place to find an utterly bewildered Bruce Banner standing in the doorway behind her. Small Bruce. No trace of the Hulk. Just Bruce in his glasses and that vivid purple shirt. Just like she remembers him from before. From long before...

"Bruce?" she says, cocking her head. "What…"

Maybe she's not alone here after all? A little thrill of hope zips through her at the thought. Maybe… but that doesn't feel right. She's alone. She knows this somehow with a certitude that weighs on her like a sodden mantle, quashing the little frisson of anticipation she'd had. Whatever this is… it's not company. Not really.

Bruce is just staring at her, clearly struck dumb at the sight. "Natasha." he says again, her name no more than a painfully eloquent escaping of breath as he stumbles towards her.

"Hey…" she says, scampering to the foot of the steps. "What are you doing here?"

"I don't know." He leans on the door, his right hand trembling slightly as it rests on the frame as he casts his eyes around at the amber sky. "I don't know how I got here. Where is here?" 

Natasha shakes her head as she scrambles for an explanation. She wants to give him a sit-rep. Formality and process had always been a comfort when she was disoriented or confused. But all the words for time and place and condition seem nebulous in her head. "I don't know either." she says, finding her voice a little foggy. "I… I think I just arrived too? It's hard to... I think… maybe it's something to do with Stone? Did… did you do it? Did you use the Stones?"

"Yes… yes, I think so?" He says, brows drawn together as if the orange haze has suddenly made it hard for him to think too. "Tony made a gauntlet and… it made the most sense for me to use it, you know? Strongest Avenger and all that…"

Right. There would have been a gauntlet. And a snapping of fingers. A new Snap. 

"Did it work?"

"I… don't know yet? I put it on… it was a lot to control. But I snapped my fingers, and said I wanted to return everyone that Thanos snapped back to life in the here and now. No changes... no…. No nothing. I snapped my fingers… and then I appeared here. With you…" He takes a step towards her with a deepening frown. "Am I dreaming?"

She cracks a dry smile. "How should I know? I might just be dreaming too."

"Am I dead?"

Her lips tremble at that. "I certainly hope not."

"Oh Natasha…" Bruce says, emotion bubbling up suddenly and cracking his voice under the pressure. "Oh Natasha, we miss you…"

"Bruce…" She says, climbing the few steps to meet him where he stands, taking his hand in hers. "It's alright."

"No, it's not." he says wiping at his face. "It's not fair. It's not fucking fair."

"If you snapped your fingers, then it worked and that makes it fair." She says gently, petting his knuckles.

"But if you're still here then it didn't work. I… I wanted to bring you back too."

Natasha feels her face fall. "Oh Bruce… I'm… I'm not an expert on all this Stone magic business, but I don't think it works that way."

He hangs his head, leaning it on the door jamb. "I know. Clint told us. But I had to try."

"It's okay. Really."

"It's not okay, Natasha." Bruce says forcefully. "None of us are okay with this. You deserved to be there. You deserved... It's… if we had known… we… Natasha, we miss you. So so much..."

"I miss you too." she says, trying to soothe him by stroking his the back of his hand. "All of you. How's… How's Steve?"

He shakes his head, not meeting her eyes. "Rough."

"He's not angry with Clint is he?" she asks, scooping up Bruce's other hand.

"No, no." Bruce says, giving another shake of his head. "He's… a little mad at you. Clint is too."

She snorts out a soft puff of laughter. "I don't doubt it." she replies. "But it had to be done. It was the only way. It had to be someone. You know that now… don't you? Now that you've used the Stones?"

Bruce only nods, head still hanging. 

"Hey." She says, cupping his chin and lifting his face as she forced a smile across her lips. "It's okay. It worked. We won."

"You didn't." he replied, sounding utterly miserable at the idea.

"Only if surviving is a prerequisite to winning. I never… Maybe I've been hanging around Steve too much, but I didn't… I think I didn't expect to leave with my life in this bargain. Even before I knew about what it took to get the Soul Stone."

"But wasn't it Steve that said we don't trade lives? Come on, Natasha."

"Steve needs to learn when it's his decision to make." she says, a taste of steel creeping into her voice. "It's okay, Bruce. It really is."

"No, it fucking _isn't._ " His rage comes over him like a wave, his hands ripping from hers and clenching by his side. And for the first time in forever, Natasha doesn't balk or back down from Bruce's display of anger. She just watches, and listens to his fury-wrought words. 

_Being dead, or whatever this is, does wonders…_ she thinks.

"It's not fucking fair, Natasha." He rails. "What, we're just supposed to be okay that you're dead and we're all alive to tell the tale? That the only one who had to pay the price is you. No, that's bullshit. That's not how this is supposed to go. We're the Avengers, goddammit. When everything settles, we are going to find a way to bring you-"

"Don't you fucking dare." She cuts him off, drawing herself up to every bit of the five feet and three inches she can boast. Her voice is a quiet but deadly thing, and it's Bruce who actually recoils in the exchange. "Don't you _fucking_ dare take this away from me. Don't jeopardize everything… _trillions_ of lives, Bruce! Don't jeopardize that for me. I _saw_ what it did to our world, and Danvers's reports confirmed that what we were seeing was happening everywhere. Across the entire universe! Don't risk that for me. It's not worth it. And don't you _dare_ let anyone else die just to bring me back. "

"Natasha…"

"It's a trade, Bruce. An exchange." She tells him, her voice going sweetly feral at the edges. "And I made this decision. Me. And you ask Clint. I fucking fought for it. My life for trillions. My life for Clint to get his family back, and for Steve to have Bucky again. Don't try to undo this to save me. We can't know it wouldn't undo everything. This is stuff that's way over all our heads. Stuff as old as the universe… and they're… we have to assume that these stupid conditions are there for a reason. And we… we have to know when the job is done, Bruce. And sometimes the job takes sacrifices. We don't… we don't trade the lives of others." She reaches up to wipe the tears now freely falling down his face. "But my life is my own to trade. Just… leave it alone. The job is done. And I'm alright. Really. There are worse ways to go, and worse places to end up. Especially for someone like me."

"Okay, Natasha… okay…" Bruce says, scooping up her hands in his again and squeezing them. He sounds wholly unconvinced of any of it, but he clearly lacks any sort of coherent argument. "I didn't mean… It's just…"

"It's alright, Bruce." She says, pulling him to her in a tight embrace. Or she imagines it's tight. She can't really feel him. "I'm alright. I'm alright with everything. If this has to be how it is… then so be it. My ledger is clean and everyone's back. Just let it be."

"Okay." He says again softly, drawing back with a somber nod. "Okay."

"You tell Clint what I told you, okay?" she says, pulling back to look him in the eye. "And Steve too. No clever fixes. No undoing it."

"I will." Bruce assures her. "You were really brave, Natasha."

"You were really brave, too, y'know?" She gently pets the side of his face with a rueful smile. "Being the one to snap your fingers? There was no way to know that using the gauntlet wouldn't have killed you."

He inclines his head consideringly and gives a mighty, sobering sniff. "I guess I don't know if it did yet or not. Still don't know where we are. But… like you said, I guess. My life is my own to trade. Maybe I'll just end up here with you. That wouldn't be so bad."

Natasha smiles up at him. Really smiles, though somehow she knows that it isn't true. It's a nice thought though.

"Yeah. As afterlives go for people like me… this doesn't suck." she opines.

"Seems lonely." Bruce replies looking back behind them at the cavernously empty equipment bay.

She lifts one shoulder in an elegant shrug as she turns to fully face the long seam of the watery horizon. "There are worse things than lonely." She says, leaning against the door jamb and folding her arms.

Bruce doesn't reply, and the heavy silence settles around them again as together they stare out across the strange seascape. The water doesn't even make a sound as it laps at the edge of the steps. The light here is so strange… and yet so familiar. Its color reminds Natasha of that sunset in Wakanda… when she'd brought Bucky the tin of pastilla. And that sunset in upstate New York when Steve had taken her out on his motorcycle. The sunset from Stark Tower, right before Thor's going away party. Sunsets at their headquarters… when it had just rained and the clouds were hazy… 

It was like any one of those blissfully beautiful moments caught and frozen in amber.

She looks up at the overcast sky and idly wonders if it rains here.

"Want me to tell you what I'll miss?" Natasha asks, leaning over just a hair as a smile pulls her mouth.

Only silence is her answer.

She looks over her shoulder and finds that Bruce is gone. She swings herself around through the door. "Bruce?" She calls, her voice echoing brightly off all the glass and tile. "Bruce?" When there's no answer, her exquisite face falls and she lets out a resigned sigh. "I'm going to miss a lot of things… I guess." she whispers to herself before folding her arms around her waist and heading back out to stare at the strange horizon.

There will be time to explore her familiarly new home later. For now, she'll exhaust herself on the curiously beautiful view. 

***

_My love, take your time._   
_I’ll see you on the other side..._

***


	2. Can't You See the Garden

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For a moment, it was perfect. Everything was perfect. Even with the smoke and dust flying, and tears running down his face washing away the dirt and blood, everything was minted perfection. What scant light there was seemed to catch in Bucky's eyes and hair, just like it always had. Before this had happened. Before any of this had happened. Before the war, and HYDRA, and Zemo. Before the well of their lives was permanently poisoned by history and circumstance. By failure after failure after failure. Bucky smiled like he had always smiled. 
> 
> And Steve lost himself to it… lost himself to Bucky's beaming face. To the relief that flooded him every time he would tighten his arms, just to feel how solid he was. He kissed him over and over. On the lips, on his cheeks, and on the part of his hair. Wherever there was skin that he could reach, he pressed his lips again and again. And Bucky just laughed, soaking it all in.
> 
> It had worked. They'd done it… Bucky was back, and everything was going to be perfec-
> 
> "Where's Natasha?" Bucky asked.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Monday! 
> 
> Or at least it's Monday where I am. I'm posting this one a bit earlier than I usually do because I'll be at work until evening, and I don't want to keep anyone waiting.
> 
> Thank you all so much for your feedback and enthusiasm for the first chapter. A lot of you were asking for Steve and Bucky's reaction and grieving, and this chapter is the beginning of it. Please do note that this fic goes to some dark emotional places before I pull a happy ending out of my magic hat. I've heard from a few of you that you're waiting until it's all published before you start reading and I 100% do not blame you.
> 
> But I do hope you enjoy it. Sad and happy stuff both!
> 
> The chapter title is taken from the song "Garden Path to Hell" from the musical "The Mystery of Edwin Drood" by Rupert Holmes.
> 
> Many thanks to my beta readers @kaminaduck and musicnerd88. I couldn't do this without you guys.
> 
> And of course... thank you all. Without your feedback and encouragement, this series seriously would have just been a one off and done. So thank you thank you thank you!
> 
> Hope you all have a lovely week, and enjoy the "Sad Supersoldier Funtime Hour!"

***

_Make your bed of roses, and sleep in it,_   
_Cuddle deep in it and pray you never wake._   
_Soon the deadly poppies come cropping up._   
_Fairly popping from the seeds of one mistake._

***

The battlefield was chaotic. Battlefields were always chaotic, but this one? The war waged in the ruined crater that had once been the Avengers compound? With armies assembled from across the stars on both sides? Magical fire, photon blasts, and good old fashioned bullets had rained down everywhere. It was beyond chaos. 

Even their victory was utter pandemonium. Enemies were there one second, with their teeth bared and weapons brandished for the killing strike. And then they were gone the next instant. Turned to ash and blown away in the wind. Blink, and you'd miss it. And for anyone not at the heart of the battle, their first sign of victory was chilling. A horrific moment of haunting familiarity. _Who_ was vanishing? Who had won? Had they lost _again?_ What the hell was happening? 

But the passing of the great Tony Stark brought everything to a grinding halt. Steve had watched… just helplessly watched as one of the finest minds to ever grace the world with its wit and certitude slipped away into nothing. There was peace in his face, but there was also sadness. He'd gambled and won for everyone but himself. The second one of their number to do so. And the real kicker was that he'd sworn that he wouldn't do it. That he wouldn't lose what he had… _couldn't_ lose it even. He'd sworn that he would keep the life he'd built in the wake of the Snap at all costs. 

And Steve had believed him. 

He'd told Tony years before that he wasn't the sort to make the sacrifice play. To be the one to lay it all on the line to save his fellows, and Tony had always seemed more than happy to back up that assessment at every turn. But when it really came down to it… when it _was_ down to the wire, Tony had laid down on that wire. For all of them.

Steve remembered that Tony had once likened the inevitability of this clash to a chess game, calling the unavoidable coming of Thanos "endgame." That everything else was just preamble… Loki, Ultron, all of it. Steve had never been big on the game, but he knew chess was about strategic sacrifice. It had never occurred to Steve that both kings might fall in the end. It only mattered that the opposing one fell first. And Tony, while he'd always been one for cutting and grandiose words, he'd also been one for the truth. And he'd been right. In the end, it had taken sacrifice to tip the scales. And they'd had to sacrifice a great deal…

He just wished Natasha had been there to see it. 

"Steve?"

His name dressed in an achingly familiar cadence broke through the clouds of his concentration. Just his name. Soft but ringing in the clamoring quiet of the battlefield like the strike of Mjolnir. He looked up, dragging his eyes away from a grieving Pepper and a dumbstruck Peter to see…

Bucky. 

All in one piece. Barely a scratch on him in fact. With his rifle in hand and vibranium arm gleaming in the patchy sunlight. And that swaggering jaunt of his.

"Steve?" he said again, the word bending his mouth into a smile. A smile that spread across his scruffy face and lit up his eyes like the slow breaking of dawn.

"Bucky…" The name was barely more than spent breath as Steve dropped both hammer and shattered shield to break out into a dead sprint. 

He crashed into Bucky like a wave, catching him with arms flung wide open and lifting him off his feet. He was clinging and clinging. And kissing and kissing, not caring who was watching. None of it mattered. Bucky was here. Bucky was alive again. Solid in his arms, not ash drifting on the wind.

For a moment, it was perfect. Everything was perfect. Even with the smoke and dust flying, and tears running down his face washing away the dirt and blood, everything was minted perfection. What scant light there was seemed to catch in Bucky's eyes and hair, just like it always had. Before this had happened. Before _any_ of this had happened. Before the war, and HYDRA, and Zemo. Before the well of their lives was permanently poisoned by history and circumstance. By failure after failure after failure. Bucky smiled like he had always smiled. 

And Steve lost himself to it… lost himself to Bucky's beaming face. To the relief that flooded him every time he would tighten his arms, just to feel how solid he was. He kissed him over and over. On the lips, on his cheeks, and on the part of his hair. Wherever there was skin that he could reach, he pressed his lips again and again. And Bucky just laughed, soaking it all in.

It had worked. They'd done it… Bucky was back, and everything was going to be perfec-

"Where's Natasha?" Bucky asked with a blushing, mirthful laugh. He drew back from their embrace to scoop up his rifle from where he'd let it fall to the ground. "I should return this to her since it's technically hers. I kind of stole it from her armory. And y'know… I should probably kiss the shit out of her, too."

And just like that, the perfection was shattered. Like a moment in time made of sugar glass. 

They were back on the ground. In the middle of a dim and dismal battlefield, strewn with ash and corpses. They were once again standing in the smouldering crater of what could have been their home. Of the home Natasha had tried to make for herself. For all of them really, whenever they wanted to come back…

Whenever they got everyone back. Because she never gave up. She was the only one who didn't.

And it was gone. They'd won, but that dream of home was still gone. Just like Peggy was gone. Just like SHIELD, and Phil Coulson, and Tony, and… Natasha...

Did "winning" mean anything if they still lost the best of them? The best of everything?

Bucky must've seen something flicker behind his eyes. He anticipated the crumpling of Steve's face before it actually happened. He read the signs. Because of course he did. It was Bucky. He dropped the rifle again and pulled him back into the circle of his arms. "Steve?" His name was an eloquent question as Bucky's radiant smile faded like a sunset. "Steve, what happened?"

Steve felt himself shake his head. The words he wanted to say were caught in the barbed snare of his throat to drown in a great gout of sudden tears. He hadn't thought of this… of how he would tell Bucky...

"What happened to Nat?" Bucky said, taking Steve carefully by the shoulders.

Steve swallowed so hard his jaw clicked. "She's gone." he managed, his voice a ruin of grief. "She… It's a really long story. But the short version is that in order to reverse what Thanos did and bring everybody back, we had to go get the Infinity Stones ourselves. And one of the Stones requires a sacrifice. Literally. And she-"

"No... " Bucky breathed the word, slowly shaking his head. "No… why didn't you stop her?" The question was rampaging out of his mouth before he could bite it in two. And he saw it strike Steve across the heart, his exquisite face crumpling in on itself further, and regret clutched at Bucky's ribs with icy claws.

"I wasn't there." Steve said, tears pouring down his face. "Clint tried to but… It was what she wanted. It was her or Clint, and Clint has a family so she..."

"No no no... " Bucky whispered the word like a mantra. As if denying her absence could result in her presence. He dropped his head to Steve's shoulder as a nearly panicked sob wracked his frame. Steve just wrapped him up in his arms as best he could, holding him tight and trying like hell to be grateful to be doing so.

"I'll… I'll tell you about it soon." He whispered into Bucky's tangled hair. "We've… we've got a lot to catch up on."

"What… what are we gonna do?" Bucky asked, looking around as if he was registering the destruction around them for the first time.

"I don't know." Steve said, a steely sort of resolve bleeding into his tone as he tightened his grip on Bucky. "We'll figure it out."

"But Natasha's gone… really gone?" Bucky's voice sounded so pitifully small in his own ears. Mewling and pathetic. As if denial were a magic spell of reversal.

"Really, really gone." Steve said, choking on the words as he buried his nose in Bucky's hair. His scent was easier to breathe than the caustic smoke-filled air. "Come on."

 

***

Since their facility upstate was a complete loss, Pepper Potts had quickly made the call to re-acquire Stark-turned-Avengers Tower in New York City and re-open it to the remaining Avengers. It was hardly as difficult an affair as it should've seemed. It wasn't like anyone was going to say no to the greatest heroes in the universe. Plus, only the lower floors had been put to use by the new tenants, and thus the residential sections of the building, R&D, and the Quinjet pad had remained just as they'd left them years ago. 

It was close enough to reach by car, so nearly everyone transferred over before morning, minus Clint who headed for the farm, understandably eager to see Linda and the kids. Steve and Bucky stayed behind to help secure the Stones and salvage what little they could from the wreck of their headquarters. By the time the two of them made it to Avengers Tower, it was well into mid-morning.

Of course, when they arrived Pepper was still going at full steam getting people situated. She'd had some breakfast delivered for everyone moving in, and was now commanding the fleet of housekeepers who were working to open up the rooms in the residential floors. All while wearing a dazzling smile that gleamed like armor. The same smile she'd worn when she told Tony that she would be okay.

Supposedly the strongest substance in the universe was vibranium. But Steve knew that was a lie. The strongest thing in the universe was Pepper fucking Potts.

"And there's the last two." she said as Steve and Bucky ascended the stairs from the garage. Her voice was tired but still warm, and her beaming face never wavering. "Can I get you guys anything? Breakfast?"

"More like can we do anything for you?" Steve said appreciatively, pulling her into a gentle hug. "You… we can manage if you need to-"

"I'm doing exactly what I need to." she said, her peaceful mask never slipping. Her cut-off had been gentle but ironclad as she squeezed his forearm. 

She opened her mouth to say more, but her phone rang. After glancing down, she smiled up at them again, even more beatific and armored than ever. "Actually, now I'm going to go do exactly what I need to." She said, flashing them the phone's screen to show little Morgan's smiling face as the incoming call. "Excuse me. And please help yourselves. There's breakfast in the common kitchen, and Steve, your old room is ready for you. Linens and towels are in the usual spots." Then she turned on her stiletto-clad heel and walked away.

Steve and Bucky watched her go. Watched her calmly and dutifully walk away with squared and unbowed shoulders to go deliver the news to her little girl that her daddy wasn't coming home.

"Come on." Bucky said, taking Steve's hand in his as the sound of her heels faded. "Let's go get settled in."

Steve's room was exactly as he remembered it, and brought with it a surprising pain. The first of many like it, he knew. He was, to say the least, acquainted with grief like this. 

It was the same room that Tony had given him after Natasha had talked him into moving into the Tower almost a decade ago. It was empty. No shield by the door, or dirty clothes in the hamper, or record player in the bookcase. They'd brought nothing with them really. All of Steve's belongings were buried under the rubble of the upstate facility, and it would be weeks before they dug it all out again. And Bucky's things were still in Wakanda, possibly being chewed on by a goat. 

But the room still felt the same. From the view of the impossibly green Central Park, to the positively gratuitous bathroom, to the giant marshmallow of a bed. And it didn't feel empty.

In the echoing closeness of the familiar room, Natasha's ghost was everywhere, tucked into every nook and shadow. Steve just stood in the raucous silence, listening to the spectre of her laughter. Believing he could smell her skin despite the sound scrubbing the room had clearly been given. He could even make himself see her silhouette against the window, ringed in the golden glow of the afternoon sunlight.

_She should be here,_ he thought, sinking down on the couch as another thick wave of tears filled his throat. _She should be here and seeing all this. Seeing the world that she saved._

"Hey." Bucky's voice gently intruded on his welling grief, pushing it back as wind could dissipate smoke. He had lagged back in the communal kitchen, and brought up the rear with two pastries in hand. "I got cherry and apple. Take your pick."

Steve tossed him a gently tearful smile over his shoulder. "I'm not hungry, Buck." he said, falling back into the cushions with a heavy thud. 

"Me neither." Bucky said, setting the apple danish on his knee as he took a spot on the couch as well. "But if I had to guess, you haven't eaten in about twenty four hours. And if everything I'm hearing is true, I haven't eaten in five years. So… we could both use it."

Steve didn't have the energy to argue, or even laugh at the remark. Just like he didn't have the energy to take a shower, or think about ordering replacement clothes, or anything else. But he found the energy to assuage Bucky's worried stare and took a bite of the danish. 

It was good, actually. Not too sugary, like everything always seemed to be these days. He'd never really gotten used to it. After the first bite, he realized he really was hungry, so he finished it in short order. And Bucky did much the same. All in silence as they both stared out over Central Park, all bright and green, and so distant it was as if nothing special had happened. It looked like it did any other day.

It was the better view Natasha had promised Steve all those years ago. When they'd stood in her room with the lights of the city carpeting the world below them. And he'd only had eyes for her in that wicked red dress…

She'd always made good on her promises. Except that last one.

_See you in a minute._

He wouldn't. He didn't. He'd never see her again. Not ever.

Suddenly, he didn't want it. He didn't want anything. Not this room. Not his flat down on the corner of the Park, or his apartment in D.C., or his cozy place back at HQ. The one which was now buried under twenty tons of concrete and twisted rebar, and he felt revoltingly satisfied at that fact. Like it should be buried, because it would never be the same. Not without Natasha to dance with him to the old Glenn Miller albums.

He wanted none of it, he realized as he looked over at Bucky, who was mechanically licking the remains of his breakfast from his fingers. For the first time since waking up from the ice, Steve just wished everything could go back the way it was. Before everything. Before HYDRA, and the War, and the serum. He wanted to go back to that grimy little one-room apartment in Brooklyn that he and Bucky had shared. The one with the leaking roof and the window that whistled when the wind blew. With the noisy streets, and the shitty plumbing, and the kerosene heater that was probably slowly giving both of them lead or carbon monoxide poisoning. He'd take the yearly battles with pneumonia and the inevitable wheezing in the winter cold if it meant he could just to have that old life back again. Have that simplicity back. Where the biggest threat was the fist of a bully Steve had called out for flapping his gums in a movie theatre.

But he knew with a leaden certainty there couldn't be any going back, because he'd take all this with him. Plus Bucky was back, and that was not nothing. He mentally kicked himself for being such a thundercloud when there was so much to rejoice over. Not everyone had lost the way he had. Some had gained. And some had lost more. Pepper was probably consoling a completely distraught Morgan right now. He had no room to mope. But that realization only made him feel guilty on top of being numb and miserable.

When he was finished with his pastry, Bucky turned his back to the arm of the couch and hitched one leg up to stretch out on the cushions. He didn't even need to speak or beckon. Steve moved into the space as if on autopilot. No gestures. Just knowing. He puddled up on his partner's chest, fingers digging into soft material of his hoodie as he relaxed against his ribs.

And Steve cried. Some more. Again. How did he still have tears? How was there anything left to wring out of his heart at this point? After everything... But it seemed he wasn't the only one that needed a good cry. He could hear Bucky sniffling as well, and feel his tears dropping into his hair. 

So for a long time they cried on each other. Quietly at first, as if they had a prayer of keeping their sorrows polite and restrained. It wasn't long, just a handful of quietly shuddering breaths, before their grief came in greater and greater waves, washing through them to come out as torrents of anguished, jagged sobs. They cried for Natasha. They cried for Tony. But they also cried in some strange shade of intermingled relief. They clung to one another like children, kissing faces and fingers through the tears. There was gratitude mixed with the grief that shaded their sorrow a thousand different ways. They seemed to find every combination of those emotions until they both finally ran out and they laid silently together again, draped across the sofa in a sniffling heap as they watched the clouds track across the hazy blue sky.

"What was it like?" Steve asked after awhile, his voice completely wrecked and waterlogged. "When it happened."

Bucky shook his head absently, his scruff tangling in Steve's hair. "I started feeling numb." he said, both his voice and his eyes gone pensievely distant. "I noticed it in my metal arm first. Thought maybe I'd blown a circuit or something. But when I looked down it was like my hand was covered in ash. I think I called for you, and then I just started falling forward. Like my legs wouldn't hold me up anymore… and that was it. Cut to black."

"It didn't hurt?"

Bucky cinched his arms tight around Steve's waist. "No, it didn't hurt, babe. As ways to die go… and I'd consider myself an expert in the matter, it wasn't bad. Just… fade to nothing. And then suddenly, poof. I'm back again. Lying on the ground with a faceful of Wakandan turf. One of the Dora was tugging me up on my feet." He paused and wiped his nose. "You were gone. Nat was gone. But Sam was there… and T'Challa. We all made a mad dash for the palace. Okoye was there and… she got us all up to speed. The reader's digest version anyway, about how it had been five years and so on. And then some wizards showed up… I don't know what else to call them really. They could do magic... or at least I think that's what it was. And at that point, I was pretty sure nothing would shock me. But then the wizards opened the portals to the Avengers headquarters, and I was so, so wrong." He laughed dryly and shook his head. "And then we charged through and… we won."

"Yeah. We won." Steve echoed, with equal lack of passion.

There was a beat of silence that weighed on the air, making it feel almost sticky to breathe in.

"So you were around for five years without me." Bucky said, mostly to keep the leaden quiet from settling too much. "And without Sam? Poor Nat… having to keep you in line all on her own." Bucky was trying and mostly succeeding to make Steve smile. "So… what were you doing all that time? Trying to figure out how to pull a reversal?"

"For awhile." Steve sighed. "About a month after Thanos snapped his fingers in Wakanda, he did it again. We caught the energy signature on a deep space scan. Turned out it was on some planet just called 'Garden.' And when we got there, we discovered that he had used the Stones to turn the Stones to dust too."

Steve could hear the confused frown in Bucky's voice. "Wait, you can do that?"

"Apparently so. Because that's what he claimed he did."

"So, then what did you do?"

"We… came home." Steve said with a shrug. "We came home and… tried to move on. Some with more success than others. Tony and Bruce probably fared the best. Tony with his family and Bruce… well, he figured out how to make peace with the Hulk so he could go back to being a scientist. It was all he ever really wanted. Now he just does the science thing, but… y'know. He stays all green now. But like… Thor? He took it hard. Harder than the rest of us, at least in the self-blame department. The only person who had it rougher than Thor was Clint, I guess. His whole family was gone. Wife and all three kids. Such a shit draw."

"Jesus." Bucky breathed in disbelief. "So what happened to him?"

"He went… AWOL. Started working on his own and tracking down… bad people. Human traffickers. Drug lords. Anyone who took advantage of the chaos to make a buck or gain control? He'd show up and run them through with…" Steve gave a sudden cough of laughter. "Get this… a samurai sword."

"No shit?" Bucky said. "I thought bows and arrows were his thing."

"Guess that's not his only fancy trick. I haven't really asked him about it. Figure he probably doesn't want to talk about it."

"So then what'd you do for all that time?"

Steve pouted his lips a little in thought. "I… finally followed Sam's advice. Started going to see a therapist. And then I joined a survivor support group."

"Really." A surprised but pleased smile tugged at the corner of Bucky's mouth.

"Really." Steve confirmed. "And… it helped. Some. Enough that I understood the appeal if nothing else, so I started taking over the meetings a couple nights a week in the city. Just… even if it wasn't completely helping me, I was helping other people. And that was something. Even if it wasn't much."

"And… what about Natasha?" He asked carefully.

Steve smiled sadly and shook his head. "She… handled herself by basically taking over Nick Fury's old racket. Keeping an eye on global events, and responding when necessary. And trying to find Clint. Which she did… just in time to save the world. The work… it was good for her, I think. Searching for Clint was hard on her, but the rest of it… I don't know. It was an anchor for her. And she was good at it. She did a lot of good in the world. I think… I think I might regret to my grave that I didn't stick by her. Help her out at the facility. Spend… spend time with her while I could."

"You… didn't stay with her?"

"No." Steve ducked his head. "I was in Brooklyn a lot of the time. Leading the support groups."

Bucky just stared out the window. He knew he wasn't getting even a tenth of the story, but how could anyone just tell it? Let alone someone as mired in it as Steve was. And everything had happened so fast. He hadn't been un-snapped twenty four hours yet. And Natasha was still breathing thirty six hours ago. How could you tell the whole story from that close of a perspective?

"So how'd you do it?" Bucky settled on asking when the silence got to be too much again. "Save the world, I mean."

"Well… the Stones in the present were gone. Still are gone, actually. But… remember Scott Lang? The guy with the shrink suit?"

"Yeah."

"Well, he and Tony figured out how to travel through time. Something to do with shrinking yourself down so far that you go sub-atomic and… I dunno. Like I get the theory, but they'd start talking about equations and hypotheses named after dead people, and I just had to start waiting until they would come around to a 'yes' or 'no' answer. Then I'd ask them to explain how it worked. Saved time, ironically enough."

"Time travel." Bucky said, leaning down to look Steve in the eye. "You're not joking."

"Nope." He replied, a smile unwittingly catching at the corner of his mouth. "I traveled through time. Twice as a matter of fact. See, we figured that since all of us had had an encounter with one or more of the Stones, we knew where in time we could find them before Thanos could get to them. So… we decided to just go get them in the past and bring them to the present. Then someone snaps their fingers and…" He snapped his own and puffed out his cheeks. "Poof. Problem solved. Then we can just take 'em back when we're done."

"But I take it everything didn't go according to plan?"

"No. There was a screw-up with getting our hands on the Tesseract that meant Tony and I had to do one extra jump, and… well... Natasha." Steve paused and licked his lips. "See, we… we didn't know there were conditions on the Soul Stone. We knew Thanos killed his daughter Gamora on that planet when he went to retrieve it, but we had no idea that act was connected to getting the Stone."

"What do you mean?"

"The Soul Stone? It requires a sacrifice to obtain it, and Gamora was Thanos's sacrifice. And… only Clint and Natasha were sent to Vormir."

"Oh." the word fell like a mote of dust. 

"I don't know what we could have done different even if we had known." Steve went on. 

Bucky bit down on the thought _I know exactly what you would have done, punk._

"And even still… no way Nat was letting Clint die." He said instead. "No way she'd let those kids grow up without their dad, huh?"

"Not a chance in hell. Plus… I mean, it's Clint. He's probably the only person alive closer to her than we are." Steve said stiffly, swallowing back the lump that threatened to rise in his throat. He'd had enough crying for one day. Bucky deserved to know the truth, and honestly it was helping him to tell it. Or at least that was what he was telling himself out of habit. "Clint said that he tried to stop her. That there was a struggle, but… her mind was made up."

"And… there's no undoing it? You said we gotta take the Stones back. Maybe-"

Steve just shook his head. "'An everlasting exchange' was what Clint called it. And Bruce said he tried to bring her back with the Stones when he snapped his fingers. But… nothing. She's gone. The Stone won't give her back."

But even as he spoke those words, his mind set to reeling. What exactly were the parameters of the exchange that bought someone the Soul Stone? What were the exact words? A life for a life? A soul for a soul? Clint had said these things… but was he paraphrasing? He'd always been one for a clever turn of phrase. Maybe...

"I can hear the gears turning in your head." Bucky said, leaning down to kiss Steve's temple. "Whatever it is that you're thinking, it's probably a terrible idea."

"Probably…" Steve said distantly. He agreed with Bucky. Really he did, but the gears ground onward.

"Come on." Bucky gently tapped him on the shoulder and urged him to sit up. "I don't know about you, but I'm still covered with Thanos-brand minion dust and powderized concrete. I would really like a shower."

"Yeah. Me too." Steve said, though he sounded far from tempted. He didn't even move.

"We'll probably feel better." Bucky encouraged, kissing the part of his hair. "Or we'll feel like a nap. Maybe a bit of both."

Steve finally nodded and rocked back onto his knees to get to his feet, pulling Bucky up with him. They both shed their clothes without ceremony, leaving them behind in a trail as they walked stiffly and sorely in the general direction of the shower. They weren't to the point of complicated things like laundry baskets or drawers or folding. Now it was just the small pleasures that kept them upright. Pastries, and lying on the couch in a tangle of sunlight, and the promise of warm water over bare, bruised skin.

At first all they could do was just stand under the hot spray of the shower, leaning together to make an A-frame with their bodies and the last scraps of their strengths. There might've been more quiet tears, but neither even had the energy to openly sob anymore. So without a sound, the water simply washed the fresh vestiges of their grieving down the drain along with the grime of the battlefield. 

"Pass me the soap." Bucky said after awhile, kissing the words into Steve's shoulder.

Steve groped behind him and produced a bottle of whatever Pepper had stocked the bathroom with. Bucky squeezed himself a generous portion and washed with a soldier's economy before Steve could say anything. Then he retrieved a fresh washcloth and set to work scrubbing the fight from Steve's skin.

"You don't have to…" Steve weakly protested, his earnestness not at all aided by his eyes slipping closed at the gentle but insistent touch of Bucky's hands.

"I know… but I want to. I haven't… it may not have been five years for me. But it _feels_ like it has been." Bucky said, nuzzling his throat as he discarded the washcloth in favor of cradling him in both hands. He wasn't really washing anymore. Just touching. Tracing familiar lines as if it were the first time all over again. "I just… we didn't get any time together before… and... " he let the thought trail off into another opened mouthed kiss against the hollow of Steve's throat.

"Buck…" Steve whispered, falling back against the tile wall and letting Bucky's lathered hands travel all over. It had been so long. So so long… and he'd completely despaired of ever feeling the touch of Bucky's mismatched hands on his body again. It was heaven even in the face of the fresh hell they were living in just to have the small pleasures of hearing his breath… his voice… to feel the slide of his hands over his body...

And in spite of the fatigue, the guilt, the sorrow, and all the rest… Steve could feel himself beginning to prickle with want. His pulse started to hammer and blood began to pool, thick and hot, down in his core. And Bucky was definitely noticing, his slippery fingers now lingering over more sensitive places. Coming up to tease his nipples, sliding down again to tickle the hollow of his hip and his navel, before finally slipping between his legs to cup his thickening cock, the contact making it jump against his palm.

"Bucky…" Steve hissed at the contact, head falling back against the tile with a thud.

"Good?" Bucky asked, his slate gray eyes searching Steve's face.

Steve nodded, catching his lip between his teeth and pinching the skin bone white. He wasn't even bothering to be demure. He was thrusting against Bucky's soap-slick hand with shameless abandon. No subtlety. No deference. Just pure, undiluted want.

"That's it, babe… that's it." Bucky coaxed, arranging them both on the tile wall, and bracing Steve on his metal shoulder. "Just relax, and let me take care of you." Bucky whispered against his dripping skin, licking the water away and not even wincing at the bitter taste of the soap. Because under it, Steve tasted like Steve. Like salt, and love, and _home._

Steve started moaning almost immediately. It was just an exhausted, needy sort of whimper, and Bucky could feel his own body starting to respond to the sound. He kissed him again, licking past his teeth with increasingly impatient strokes of his tongue. And Steve's eager response, clutching his shoulders and thrusting against his hand, was stoking Bucky's own growing desire. He eased Steve along the wall to the shower seat and crawled into his lap. Their cocks slotted together side by side in his hand as he braced them against the wall with his metal arm. Steve's hands came up to cup Bucky's ass as he started to work them both in tandem. The velvety hardness of his cock, combined with the perfect pressure of his hand was everything Steve needed both in that moment and for the last five years. 

Steve was coming unwound fast. He arched his back, propping himself up on both hands as Bucky licked the water from his heaving chest with brazen swipes of his tongue. He barely had the strength to thrust but he hardly needed to. Bucky knew exactly what he needed. He always did. Always had. Even after all this time, and yet no time at all. In whatever time they found themselves, it was never any different. Bucky would always know him, inside and out.

"Steve…" It was Bucky's turn to eloquently moan his partner's name. He cupped the base of Steve's skull and plundered his mouth with tongue and teeth, giving him delicious, groaning cries to devour whole. And he did so greedily as he thrust up into Bucky's soapy fist, grinding their cocks together in that perfect pressure that was rapidly twining them both up tighter and tighter.

It was actually Bucky who came first, panting against Steve's open mouth and spilling over his fingers and all over Steve's cock. But Steve followed a moment later, when the friction turned deliciously slick as Bucky's come coated his straining length. His orgasm was drawn out of him slowly, threaded onto a long thin moan as he copiously added to the mess.

"Now we have to wash again…" Steve said breathlessly, tucking Bucky closer to his body.

"I don't mind." Bucky said, the words muffled by the spray of the water and lazy mouthfuls of Steve's wet skin.

"Me neither." Steve said, kissing a line up the side of Bucky's neck and burying his face in his soaked hair. "Come on… my turn."

Steve lathered up their washcloth and slowly and carefully scrubbed Bucky down, chasing the rinsing water with an equal measure of kisses. And then, when they were both clean, they hopped out of the shower on still unsteady legs and made quick work of drying off.

Once they were clean and dry, it was as if a wrecking ball of exhaustion crashed into them both. They collapsed into the bed in a tangled heap, not even bothering to put on clothes, or to turn down the covers, or close the blinds. Steve wasn't even sure Bucky was still awake before his head hit the pillow. He never said another word and was snoring softly within seconds. But Steve lingered for just a moment. Long enough to wind a damp curl of Bucky's hair around his finger. To stroke the line of his whiskered cheek. To kiss the easing furrows on his forehead.

And long enough to be grateful. Even though his heart was still in pieces, those pieces were grateful. He had Bucky back at least… and he was grateful. _Should_ be grateful.

But as his eyes slipped closed and sleep slowly claimed him, the gaping hole left behind by Natasha yawned in the darkness behind his eyelids like a ravening beast. And he knew that sleep wouldn't leave him any more rested. Nothing would. Not anymore.

***

_Can't you see the garden?_   
_It's such a lovely garden..._   
_I'll take you there, I know the path so well..._   
_To Hell._

***


	3. Thy Mates of the Garden

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "What are you thinking about?" Bucky finally caved and asked.
> 
> "A change in the plan." Steve answered, not looking over his shoulder.
> 
> Bucky blinked. "With the Stones?"
> 
> "Yeah sort of, I guess."
> 
> Bucky suddenly grew even more wary, and didn't even bother to hide it on his face. They might've been through hell and back. Both of them coming back from the brink of death at least a few times each. And in all that time, the whole world had changed around them. But one thing that hadn't ever changed was that James Buchanan Barnes would always know what a bad idea looked like on Steven Grant Rogers.
> 
> "You can't bring Natasha back." he said flatly.
> 
> "I wasn't going to try to." Steve cut back, gaze never wavering. There was no force in his voice. No bite. No… nothing. 
> 
> Bucky blinked at that. "Then what are you thinking about doing?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy very early Monday morning everyone!
> 
> Once again, I've got a morning shift at work, so it's either post before I go to bed, or it waits until Monday evening. And since the fic is basically done, I hate to keep you guys waiting.
> 
> Thank you all so so so much for all your kind words and wonderful feedback! I can't tell you how much I appreciate it. Especially because I've been sweating writing this fic.
> 
> Thank you's also go out to my beta readers, KaminaDuck and musicnerd88. Love you guys 3000!
> 
> This chapter title is taken from the poem "The Last Rose of Summer" by Thomas Moore.
> 
> Don't forget to follow me on Tumblr @littlethingwithfeathers if you're interested in writing updates and general fandom shenanigans. (I'm obsessed with HBO's Chernobyl mini-series right now. It's amazing.)
> 
> Enjoy everyone! I'll see you next week.

***

_'Tis the last rose of summer,_  
_Left blooming alone;_  
_All her lovely companions_  
_Are faded and gone;_  
_No flower of her kindred,_  
_No rosebud is nigh,_  
_To reflect back her blushes,_  
_And give sigh for sigh._

_I'll not leave thee, thou lone one!_  
_To pine on the stem;_  
_Since the lovely are sleeping,_  
_Go, sleep thou with them._  
_Thus kindly I scatter,_  
_Thy leaves o'er the bed,_  
_Where thy mates of the garden_  
_Lie scentless and dead._

***

It doesn't take long before Natasha settles into a strange, timeless routine within her gold-tinged reconstruction of the Avengers HQ. Or at least, she doesn't imagine it takes all that long. There's no real way to mark the passage of time. She has none of her personal equipment beyond her tac suit. There are no working electronics anywhere. Or even non-working ones. The facility is completely stripped down to the walls. As if no one had ever been there.

And there never seems to be any change in the outside world. Not ever. No waxing or waning of light, nor rise and fall of any heavenly bodies. Just the omnipresent cloud cover swirling low overhead. Everything appears to remain exactly the same. Seemingly incapable of change in any way.

And not only were the facility and its surrounds completely unchanging, so it seemed was she. She was never hungry. Never sleepy. Never got dirty, or sweaty, or wet despite her best attempts. She can barely feel her body in fact, which was a sort of a blessing since she seems to be eternally in her tac suit. But it's strange. Everything from the sky, to the rippling water, to the building, to herself seemed perfectly static. She felt like a fly preserved in a literal world of amber.

Once she determined this, she decided to take a very purposeful stroll through her new but familiar home. Every room was as empty as she'd first found the training hall. No furniture. No personal belongings or knick-knacks. And no people. She'd half-expected to find someone eventually, just as Bruce had seemed to stumble upon her. But for the time being at least, it seems she is very much alone. Nothing but her and an empty collection of rooms ensconced in an endless watery void. 

After she'd catalogued the facility's interior, she'd headed outside to confirm again that all she had was the main building. None of the outlying structures had made the trip to her personal Soul Stone inspired vision of the afterlife. But she still thought it best to go exploring. So explore she did, circuiting the single building a few times at least. Everything was exactly as she remembered it minus… well, everything. But she did find that the surrounding water was never more than a few inches deep no matter where she wandered, and all there was beneath the surface was smooth, featureless stone.

Eventually, Natasha got bored enough and curious enough to start testing the limits of her new home. Lacking any sort of measurement or time keeping devices, she figured her best bet for gauging any kind of distance was just walking. She knew if she kept a lengthy stride, it was about two thousand steps to a mile. So with the doldrums of solitude truly set in and inquisitiveness hot on their heels, she decided to start walking and counting. 

Two thousand steps through the mirror-like water keeping the facility squarely behind her. Just walking and counting. And when she'd reached two thousand, she turned to look back. With nothing to obstruct them, the ripples emanating from her steps formed a long tail behind her like that of a brassy peacock. And the facility looked as it should. Still dominating the view, but wholly visible. And so she kept walking. Another two thousand steps and it had shrunk again. Another set shrank it further. And so on. And so on. Distance, it seemed, operated more or less as it should. But no other structures came into view. Just more endless water. 

But it was when she decided to head back that things took a strange turn. She'd walked for several miles, but it seemed she only needed to travel a few hundred steps before she was back at the front door of the facility.

Strange. But useful in a way, if not downright helpful for future exploration. Surely there was something else out there after all.

Once getting lost in the featureless landscape didn't seem to be a danger, Natasha started making a habit of going on adventures. When she would get stir-crazy from sitting around HQ with no company but the endless quiet, she'd set out in a randomly selected direction and walk until walking bored her. From this practice she learned that no matter how far she went, she could always see HQ, even if only as a faint speck on the even fainter smudge of the horizon. And no matter how far she went, returning to the compound seemed to be only a matter of intent. Turn back, walk for a bit, and she was back on the doorstep.

But when she wasn't walking, she found herself gravitating to the empty husk of Steve's room, where she would tuck herself into the nook of the window and stare out at the burnished landscape. Her memories crowded her anywhere else in the facility. And sometimes the company was welcome. But not always. Here in his room… there was just the ghost of Steve to keep her company. And he had never been bad company. Not ever. 

She whiled away… well, she couldn't say how much time in front of the small window where his desk had been. But she wasn't there for the view. From her little niche, she could close her eyes and call to memory every detail of the room as it had been in life. Fill it with… well… with Steve. She could remember all the pictures that had hung on the walls. The awards and the plaques. See the file on the Winter Soldier lying open on his desk as it had for years, beside the near-canonized portrait of Peggy Carter. She could find the shadow of his shield tucked behind the door… ready for action at a moment's notice. And she could recall his bookcase full of old records. And remember the music they had played… 

Steve had loved to dance with her… especially after they'd first come to the facility. When they were training Wanda and Vision and the others. God… those days were golden… not like this. Not this strange suspended state. They'd glowed. They'd been alive… all of them…

Those had been good days…

Not perfect. Bruce was gone. Bucky was still missing. But the days had been good.

Wanda and Vision, slowly but inexorably falling in love. They were like a law of the universe, those two. She could remember Sam laughing at her as she'd sailed around in his wings. Rhodey challenging Vision to a round of marksmanship. Dr. Foster and Dr. Selvig and that randy assistant of theirs Darcy… always excited about something happening down in the lab. Always talking too fast with too many numbers for even Natasha to follow.

And Steve. Her and Steve. It was never more her and Steve than in those days. Mother and Father to the new team… the two of them fell into those roles like they were made for it. 

Perhaps they were...

There was no record player here now, but Natasha had one in her mind. And sometimes, like now, when she wanted to summon Steve to her side, she need only sing one of those old crooners they loved, and she can almost feel the ghost of his arms around-

"Natasha?" an unexpected voice falls on her ears. She'd been listening to a memory of Steve singing softly in her ear, so it takes her a moment to recognize it. And even then she doesn't really believe it until she turns from the window.

There, in the shadow of Steve's old room, stands Tony Stark, wearing a dark track suit and a confused frown that's nearly painful to look at.

Her brow pinches as she pulls herself up onto her knees, looking him up and down as she does. "Tony?"

He stumbles towards her a few steps. "Natasha…" is the only answer he has for her as he falls to his knees and then into her arms. "Shit…"

"What… what is it? What are you doing here? Did something go wrong?" She asks, panic rising in her voice and drawing it thin as a piano wire. She fights between the instinct to gather him to her and to ask a million questions. But she settles on two more before she gives him a moment to speak. "Did it not work? Did we get it wrong?"

"Thanos followed us… from the past…" Tony gives his head a good shake and his wild-eyed stare clears somewhat. "We gave him a helluva fight though. You should have seen it, Natasha! You should have _been_ there! The armies of Wakanda… all the wizards from Strange's order… Asgardians… And fuck, everyone who was snapped! Sam was there. And Bucky. And Peter. They all came through these portals and… you… you should have been there..." He's babbling but then he trails off, almost as if he's forgotten he was speaking.

"But what are you doing here?" She asks, squeezing his arms.

"I… I had to snap my fingers." He says dully. Almost as if the idea confuses him.

"But why... why did _you_ have to snap your fingers? Why again?" She asks as gently as she can.

"He… Thanos… he brought his whole army. And he got the gauntlet I made. He put it on… he… he thought he'd won..."

"But…?" She presses, holding him up and away from her by the shoulders.

Panic fizzes like acid in his eyes as he stares up at her, but then… then it clears again. Like he's remembered something long lost to time. And he looks at her, steely eyed and certain. "But I got the Stones away from him… I snapped the bastard, Nat. I got him. And his whole army, and his little fucking dog, too… Nat… we..."

Natasha gives in finally and pulls him up in her arms, squeezing him as tight as she can manage and saying the only thing that comes to mind. "Tony, you fucking idiot. You'll be lucky if you don't kill yourself."

"Oh, I'm a dead man, Nat. Felt it." He says, the words buried along with his face in the collar of her tac suit. "Could feel it the second I put it on… only thing to do was snap my fingers before it ate clean through me."

"Oh no… Tony…"

"There was no time. No… that was it." He shakes his head again, almost dizzyingly hard. "That was the endgame. I was the one chance in fourteen million. And that's why Strange wouldn't tell me the ending he saw. Because he knew I would try to find a way out of it if I knew. He _knew_ I'd be a coward."

"You're not a coward, Tony." Natasha says, gathering him close to her again. "You of all people are no coward."

"No, I am." He says with a mighty sniff. "Steve was wrong about a lot of stuff, but he was right about that. I'll save my own skin if I can, but… there was no time. When I saw him pop that Power Stone out of the gauntlet to use it against Danvers, and then put it back? Fuck, I knew I could outsmart the bastard. I knew I wouldn't outlive him doing it, but… had to be done."

"Oh Tony…" Natasha smooths her hand down the side of his face. "You did good."

He raises his head from her shoulder as a smile forces its way onto his tired face. "So did you. We… we did it by the way. We won. Thanks to you. Which, bee-tee-dubs," He jabs a finger playfully into her sternum. "Your boys are pissed as all fuck. All three of them, I guess by this point."

She snorts. "Yeah, I imagine so."

She settles them in the window nook, both of them sliding down on either side of the deep set frame to face each other.

"So the first snap worked?" Natasha asks. "Bruce's snap?"

"Like a charm."

"Well, that's a relief at least."

They both sigh a little, pressing back into the walls of the window nook.

"It's just you in here?" Tony asks, staring out at the water.

She lifts one shoulder. "Haven't found anyone else." she answers, eyes skimming the water out towards the tawny horizon. "Bruce came through too at one point. But only for a minute."

"You saw Bruce?"

"Right after he snapped his fingers, or that's what he said. How… how long has it been out there."

"Maybe an hour or two?"

She screws up her face at that. That didn't feel right at all. "It's… time is sort of strange in here. Feels like it's been longer, but I don't really have any way to know."

Tony just nods, tongue skirting his bottom lip as he thinks.

"Bruce okay?" Natasha asks, her eyes clearly asking more.

"Burned the shit out of his arm. But yeah. He'll be alright." Tony stares disinterestedly out the window, rapping on the glass with his knuckles. The sound it makes is dull and faint. "So this is the afterlife for you?"

Natasha heaves a shrugging nod. "I guess so. For people who die for the Soul Stone, I guess."

"Yeah… color scheme makes sense."

Natasha wrinkles her nose. "Orange was never my color, but what can you do?"

"What can you do..." Tony repeats and keeps knocking on the glass, if only to fill the silence. "Seems boring."

"It is."

"Seems lonely."

"It is."

He gives one last really hard knock on the glass. The hollow sound is startling in the cavernous quiet. "You deserve better than this, Nat."

"So did everyone who was snapped, Tony." she answers, sounding a little tired at the argument. "It was them or me. And I chose them. And more specifically I chose Clint. And I chose Bucky. And Steve."

"I wish we had known. About the Soul Stone, I mean."

Natasha snorts dryly as she lets her head knock against the wall. "If we had known about the condition of retrieving the Soul Stone, you and I both know it would have been Steve in here."

Tony rolls his eyes so hard she can practically hear his eye sockets creak under the strain. "Fuck, you're so right. God, I'm glad it's me and not him with the snappy bit too. Can you imagine? The eulogies would go on for fucking _days._ It would be insufferable." His feigned indifference shifts into a brilliant Tony-Stark-Brand-Smile that melts Natasha's heart. And she laughs, a dusty disused little cough of sound that quickly wilts into a sob.

"I'm sorry, Natasha." Tony says, reaching over to take her hand as the smile fades from his lips.

"It's… okay. Really. I just wish..." she sucks in a saturated breath. "I just wish I could tell him… that I'm okay, y'know? Really. That… that I'm fine, and that he's going to be fine, because he and Bucky are going to be fine. It's going to be _fine."_

"I know… I know it is. I'll… tell him. If I can. I don't know that I can… I don't…" he shakes his head dismissively. "I don't know how much time I'll have. But I'll try to tell him."

"Thanks…" she sniffs with as satisfied a nod as she can muster. 

"I'm glad I got to hear you say it, anyway." Tony says, touching his palm to her cheek and wiping away the tears there. "We miss you… we'd bring you back if we could."

"Can't." she says, the word little more than a wheeze. 

"I know." he sighs. "When I used the Stones… I… I got it, y'know? For a second?"

"Yeah…"

"I'm… probably your last visitor." Tony says, fidgeting with the sleeve of his jacket. "Unless Steve does something incredibly stupid."

"He wouldn't…"

Tony just arches an eyebrow at her. And for a moment, her heart floods with affection and anxiety in equal measure. She feels her eyes prick with tears again and she crashes forward into Tony to sob quietly into his shoulder. And he gathers her to him, just like he had done with Morgan and rocks her on his chest.

She thinks about begging him… begging him to tell Steve not to do anything stupid. But she already knows he will. But only if he can. So she just hopes. She'll have sent two messengers. Hopefully at least one arrives.

"We're gonna be alright." Tony whispers into her mismatched hair. "We'll all be alright. And you did it for us. You made it possible. You did it."

" _We_ did it." she corrects, words treading in the tears still streaming down her face.

"Yeah. You're right." He gives her a smile stained with his own sorrow before kissing both her hands "We did. No insufferable eulogies for us." he tells her before pulling her to him again. "Just some damned peace and quiet."

How long they stay like that Natasha couldn't say. All she knows is that at some point, she's aware that her cheek is no longer pressing against the soft material of Tony's track jacket. Her head is instead leaning against the cold wall.

He's gone. 

Tony's gone back to the others to breathe his last with his family around him. And she's left once again with their ghosts, and the prevailing sound of her own sad songs balanced on the painfully gentle wind and water that she can barely hear and can never quite feel.

***

After spending a week apart to get their various affairs in order, the Avengers and their assorted family members, partners, and hangers-on reconvened at the Stark family's cabin for Tony's funeral. There had been a big public spectacle of a memorial in New York City, but hardly any of the Avengers were actually there. Just Rhodey and Banner were in attendance, and otherwise it was just dignitaries from both SHIELD and the U.S. government. And it was televised, of course. Tony Stark was remembered with high aplomb by the public, but it wasn't until later that he was truly laid to rest.

No, there was a funeral in private for his team. For his friends. For… in truth, his family. That was where Tony spoke to them from the recording he'd made just prior to their little trip through time. And where Pepper laid Tony's heart to rest in the lake he loved beside the cabin he loved with the garden he tended with love… with the family he'd found and made and loved. 

And who loved him back. 

It was a beautifully simple service with few words, and it was a wonderful time together that they all tacitly agreed had not really ever been seen before and wasn't likely to be seen again. Not all of them. Not all at the same time. They were family. They were the Avengers. But that didn't absolve them of their individual responsibilities and crusades. And even though Thanos was gone, the universe was still a very big place. Just one conversation with Carol Danvers was all anyone needed to confirm that.

And so with most of their collective grief attended to, it was time to head back to wherever it was that they each called home. For Thor, that was space alongside the rest of the Guardians to find his destiny as they searched the stars for Gamora. It was the same for Carol Danvers, though she promised Fury that she'd be in touch. For Clint, it meant that he was headed back to the farm with the family that had been restored to him. Wakanda called to its king and his entourage. Scott and the Van Dynes went home to California. Peter Parker went back to Queens and to high school, and to what passed for a normal childhood when you had superpowers. Fury and Hill were headed back underground. Back into whatever clandestine hole they'd crawled out of to respectfully weep over Tony Stark. The world was spinning on, and they needed to be there in case it tilted off its axis again. 

And so on… and so on…

For many of them… Banner, Rhodey, Steve, Bucky, Sam, and Wanda… the Avengers life still called. At Pepper's invitation, they returned to New York City. To Avengers Tower. To their rooms, and the lab, and the training levels. All of it at their disposal once more with her blessing. She'd told them it was theirs, because she knew there was work to be done. There was a time machine that needed to be rebuilt so the Stones could be restored to their proper places. And really… where else could they go? It was what passed for home now, even though most of them still felt like strangers within the walls of the Tower without Tony. His effervescent presence had powered the building's soul as surely as the Arc Reactor powered everything else. 

But after everything that happened… even with a mission dangling in front of them, it just felt hollow. Days slipped by unmarked. Forced routine seemed to be the only thing keeping it all spinning, but everything felt rote. Empty. Drained of substance and meaning, in spite of a clear objective. Just as before when the Snap happened, some handled their new reality better than others. Banner had the time machine to work on, and often employed Wanda's help as a lab assistant. Sam was busily catching up on five years worth of news and Netflix shows in between getting his wings back under him again. Rhodey was coordinating with various world governments regarding the sudden return of half the population, some of them popping back into rather awkward situations. And of course, he was keeping in touch with Fury too.

But Steve and Bucky? They struggled.

Sometimes, they just sat in their room. After they'd worn themselves out training and sparring, but before it was time for dinner, they would go to their shared room and just stare out the window. No conversation. No distractions but the view. Just proximity and silence, because they both knew that they couldn't endure the silence alone. The vacuum was too great. The all-consuming void left by Natasha's passing sucked all the air out of the room. Out of their lungs. Out of their minds. Sapping all will to move or think. But if they were together, they could at least be convinced that the world would keep turning. That something outside of their grief was real.

But if their shared grief over their lost lover wasn't enough, the lingering presence of the Stones in the Tower seemed to poison the air around them. Until they were gone, the job wasn't done, but it was a waiting game. They needed the time machine, and they did their best not to seem like thunderclouds while they waited for it to be built. Bruce seemed to sense that though, and one day while Steve and Bucky were finishing up their workout, he stopped by the gym.

"Steve? Could I have a word with you in the lab when you guys finish up? Nothing's wrong. We're starting to get close on the machine, and I wanted to get going on the game plan for returning the Stones."

"Sure thing, Bruce." he replied, that good old Captain America dutifulness slipping over his demeanor as naturally as a well worn leather jacket. 

"Thanks. No rush." Bruce replied, turning and waving stiffly over his shoulder. "I'll be downstairs."

Bucky felt his eyes reflexively narrow, and was grateful Steve was in front of him so he had time to school his expression before Steve turned around. Something about that exchange stuck in his craw. Bruce didn't just want to talk about the Stones. Or maybe he did, but not just to do with returning them.

"So you're taking the Stones back?" Bucky settled on asking as Steve turned back to face him.

"Yeah." he replied. "I was around for lifting two of the Stones, plus you can sort of count the Time Stone since it was in the same place as the Mind Stone. Makes sense for it to be me."

"Who's going with you?"

Steve just lifted a shoulder. "Maybe that's what he wants to talk about."

Bucky didn't buy it for a second. "You can't go alone. Those are your rules, Steve."

He gave a chuckle so dry it could be used for kindling. "Since when have I ever been good at following my own advice?"

"Never." Bucky shot back, doing his level best to sound friendly. "That's why you always had me."

Steve smiled at him then, a genuine but frightfully sad expression.

"Let me come with you." Bucky said, surprising himself at his own frankness. This was truly starting to worry him on top of everything else.

Steve's brow pinched and he shook his head. "It's alright, Buck."

"I know you think it is. But it's not okay to me. Let me come with you." He insisted.

Steve put his hands on his hips and huffed out a resigned sigh, clearly knowing better than to argue the issue now. "I'll talk to Bruce about getting you a suit ready." he settled on saying. "Not sure what kind of condition that stuff is in."

It wasn't a yes, but it wasn't a no either, so it would have to do. Bucky gave him a short nod.

"I'm gonna go hit the shower." Steve said, flinging his towel around his neck. "Go see what Bruce wants."

"Want me to grab us some lunch from downstairs?"

"Yeah. Whatever you're in the mood for is fine."

"I'll catch up to you in a bit then." Bucky said. "I'm going to do one more set."

Steve turned to go and Bucky swallowed mightily against the worming sensation in his gut. Bruce didn't just want to talk to Steve about the Stones. And Steve had actually been considering returning them alone? Something about this wasn't sitting well with him, but he didn't have enough information to really know why. He just knew Steve. And Bruce Banner was about as sly and secretive as DumDum Dugan after a third round of whiskey. No. Something was definitely up, and it would be a mighty trick to figure out what without resorting to the truly underhanded skills in his repertoire.

But how underhanded was overhearing anyway? Especially if he was in a place he'd promised to be?

After Steve had left the gym, Bucky showered and made quick work of procuring pizza from a place around the corner from the Tower. A whole pie with everything, and two of those coca-colas with real sugar. He was at the lab door only a few minutes behind Steve. He almost pushed the swinging door open, but their voices snagged in his ears and he froze when he realized what Steve was asking.

"You… you _saw_ her?" he asked a little incredulously. "Natasha? After…"

"Just for a minute or two." Bruce replied. "After I snapped my fingers. Everything went white and… I saw her for a minute."

"You're… you're sure? It… wasn't a hallucination? You were in a lot of pain, Bruce."

"I'd have questioned it too if I wasn't wearing the gauntlet." he said. Bucky could picture him shaking his head. "But… I just… knew? I knew where I was, and I knew it was her."

Bucky heard Steve sigh. A harsh outrush of air.

"I'm… sorry I didn't tell you sooner." Banner was saying.

"How... was she?" Steve's voice sounded paper thin.

"She was okay. She was glad to know it worked."

Bucky dared a peek around the window frame. Steve was just nodding, his broad shoulders bowed under the weight of the conversation. 

"She say anything else?" he asked.

"Yeah um… and this is why I didn't say anything. I was gonna wait and tell whoever was going back. I kinda thought it might be Clint, but-"

"What did she say?" Steve said, putting on his Captain America voice to ask this time. But it sounded so tired. So fed up. And used up.

"Don't try to undo it." Bruce answered quickly.

"Of course." Steve sounded about as sincere as a drunk being asked if he was drinking again.

"I'm serious, Steve. And so was she. We… we're messing with stuff way above our paygrade. There's no way to know that it won't undo my snap or Tony's snap or… fuck, who knows what. It's permanent. 'An everlasting exchange.' I tried to undo it, but it wouldn't let me."

"Even when you tried with the gauntlet..."

"I guess everything has its limits." Bruce said, shoulders giving a shrug. 

Bucky chose that moment to merrily barge in as if he'd just arrived. "Lunch time!" he crowed, his voice shatteringly bright.

The other two men tossed smiles to him on his arrival, but carried on their conversation, though Bucky noticed a hard shift in their tone. "So you're sure you're good to do the returns?" Bruce asked. "Cause, I mean I could do it maybe? Or call Clint."

"You've got to be here to run the machine. And I don't want to pull Clint away from his family again." Steve replied with a slow shake of his head. "No, I'll take care of it."

" _We'll_ take care of it." Bucky cut in as he set the pizza box on a side table and flipped it open.

"Right… Right. That was what I meant to ask you, Bruce." Steve said, visibly shaking himself.

 _Sure you did, punk._ Bucky thought sullenly.

"Yeah?"

"Bucky's going to come with me to return the Stones. Y'know… we said no one time travels alone so, do we have enough particles and an extra suit for him to use?"

Bruce frowned but nodded. "Yeah, I can take care of that. That's a really good idea actually. Keep you from doing anything too crazy." Bruce elbowed Steve before drifting off to a computer console.

"You vastly overestimate my abilities, Dr. Banner." Bucky replied, words muffled around a mouthful of hot cheese. The glib remark earned him another pair of weary smiles. "You want some pizza?"

"Oh no thanks. I promised Wanda we'd go for Thai once I wrapped up some parameters for the fabrication engine. We're getting closer. It's just… without Tony." he waggled one hand. "His shorthand can be Greek sometimes."

"Well, don't let us keep you then." Steve said, starting to back towards the door. "Thanks for the update. And the advice."

"You bet. See you guys later."

Bucky scooped up the pizza box again and followed.

The day continued as usual from there. Lunch followed by sparring and another shower. The afternoon spent in quiet companionship so as not to disturb the tower of grief that cast a shadow over both of them. Then dinner. Then a movie from their list (they were working their way through the Oscar winners for Best Picture from the past few decades). Then eventually they would head to bed.

But Bucky couldn't help but notice that Steve was much quieter than normal. He was always quiet, sure. But this was different. A sort of cloistered and self-concerned quiet. Lost in his own head in a way Bucky had rarely seen. He watched him out of the corner of his eye as they both pretended to pay attention to _Amadeus._. The gears in Steve's head were clearly turning apace over the information Bruce had given him.

He'd talked to Natasha. When he'd snapped his fingers, Bruce had seen her. Spoken to her, even. That meant she was alive? Or possibly trapped somehow? But that didn't seem right. She'd had to die for Clint to get the Soul Stone. But still, Bruce had spoken to her, and she'd had a message for them. She'd sent instructions to not undo the sacrifice she'd made, as if such a thing could be done. Bruce had even tried with the most powerful object in the universe. Nothing. Bucky had no idea where to even begin with something like that.

But Steve was clearly still thinking about it. Or about something anyway. Part of Bucky almost wished Bruce hadn't told Steve. Because if Bucky knew anything, he knew Steve did not like to be told what it was he could not do. It was like a personal challenge, and it didn't matter the scale. Beat up a bully twice his size in an alley or change the cosmic laws of the universe. They were bound to get the same reaction out of Steve Rogers.

_Watch me._

Bucky leaned over, laying his head on Steve's knee and looking up at him. Steve's eyes flicked down as his hand set to work as if on autopilot combing through his dark hair. And he smiled just a little. It was tired, but there was warmth there. Bucky turned and kissed the top of his thigh, content to be a distraction from whatever ill-advised plan Steve was concocting.

Surely he wouldn't actually do anything.

Surely...

***

Bucky had hoped that Steve would leave the planning and plotting and work-around-finding alone for awhile. At least until the machine was finished, but no such luck. Days stretched into weeks while Bruce and Wanda continued to work on the time machine, and during that time Bucky had watched something in Steve Rogers slowly wither and die as he picked incessantly at his wounds. 

He'd been through a lot with the man. He had seen Steve grieve. Even been the source of that grief, and he had both seen with his own eyes and heard from Natasha about how well or not well Steve had handled it. He knew what angry grieving looked like on him. And resigned. And stalwart.

But this? This was new. This was different. Steve had never been a terribly verbose man, but after the conversation with Bruce about Natasha, he became unsettlingly quiet. He'd stare off into space for hours and pace aimlessly around the Tower, clearly having a conversation with no one but his own head. Didn't matter time or place. He was just primed to drift off now. They'd had to rewatch the Godfather twice now because he hadn't been paying attention. Bucky had nearly clocked him more than a few times in the sparring ring because his mind was elsewhere. And Bucky was certain Steve would have starved by now if he wasn't keeping them on their routine.

One day, Bucky caught him standing outside the lab, watching through the glass door as Bruce and Wanda worked on the new time machine. Bucky observed from a few feet away, though he knew Steve had heard him approach. He'd seen the slight stiffening of his spine and barest angle of his head. But he gave it a minute. Gave it a minute, and just really looked at Steve, worry settling in his gut like a chunk of jagged ice.

And that's when he finally decided enough was enough.

He paced closer, swinging around behind Steve to see what he was seeing, and as it turned out he wasn't watching Bruce and Wanda work. He was staring at the reinforced case on the far wall that contained the Infinity Stones.

"What are you thinking about?" Bucky finally caved and asked.

"A change in the plan." Steve answered, not looking over his shoulder.

Bucky blinked. "With the Stones?"

"Yeah sort of, I guess."

Bucky suddenly grew even more wary, and didn't even bother to hide it on his face. They might've been through hell and back. Both of them coming back from the brink of death at least a few times each. And in all that time, the whole world had changed around them. But one thing that hadn't ever changed was that James Buchanan Barnes would always know what a bad idea looked like on Steven Grant Rogers.

"You can't bring Natasha back." he said flatly.

"I wasn't going to try to." Steve cut back, gaze never wavering. There was no force in his voice. No bite. No… nothing. 

Bucky blinked at that. "Then what are you thinking about doing?" he asked, trying to keep the warning out of his voice. Steve wouldn't listen if he argued out right. Bucky needed to find out what sort of idiocy he was planning first, because clearly it wasn't what he had expected. He forced himself to breathe. He had time. The machine wasn't finished yet. He might pull Steve back from the brink of whatever this was.

"What if I don't come back?" Steve said, the words dull but sharp all at once. Like the snapping of dead twigs underfoot. "What if… after we return the Stones... What if I go back?"

"Back?" Bucky asked, his brows rising in confusion. "Back to…" Understanding dawned on him as he took in Steve's profile, the resignation… the surrender writ into his features. He meant _back._ Really back. All the way back to… "You mean…"

"Yeah." Steve said, eyes distant but brightly pyretic. "Go back to Peggy. Have it be like it was supposed to go before I had to crash the plane in the Atlantic."

"What…?" It was barely a question and more an exclamation at the sheer lunacy of the idea. Or was it betrayal? "Steve... what… why?"

"That was the life I was supposed to have." Steve said, turning his fathomlessly forlorn and exhausted eyes on him. And for a moment, Bucky thought he might drown in the ache of them.

Or perhaps in the welling of his own heartbreak. Steve would leave him? Of all the possibilities, that was certainly not one he'd considered. Not after everything. Not after he'd fought so hard to get him back. "But… what about this life? Why go back?"

"Because… I could make things better! I… I know things, Buck!" That fevered hysteria lit on his face again, fanned to full flame this time. Not just lurking behind his dead eyes anymore. "I know about you. I can save you! Keep HYDRA out of SHIELD! God, if Peggy had known what had happened… But I could tell her! And it would all be diff-"

Bucky shook his head, tugging Steve's elbow so he would stop looking at those damn Stones. "It doesn't work like that, Steve… not the way Bruce explained it to me. You can't go back into the past to change the future."

"I know, I know… it branches. But… maybe I just never end up here. Going back… that means I get to get it right for once. That I can get it right just one time." The words came out strangled and pitiful under a new wave of tears. "Maybe it means that at least once… none of this ever happens." He tossed a flailing gesture at Bucky's mechanical arm. "That… that… we never..."

"Hey hey hey…" Bucky pulled him close, ignoring the souring feeling in his gut as he squeezed Steve tight. "You did get it right. We all made it right."

Steve gave a hard sniff and shook his head. "How can you say that when-" 

Bucky drew back, cradling Steve's face in his hands. "Hey, punk. Look at me." And Steve did, with eyes hollowed out by weeks of grief and guilt. "If HYDRA is what it took for me to have this… If I had known the end of the line was here? I still would have gone through with it. You hear me, Rogers? You got it as right as anyone can hope to."

Steve took a shuddering breath and let it leave him in a rush as he gave the least convinced nod in history. "Yeah…"

Bucky pulled him close, his metal hand eating into the muscles of Steve's shoulder as the other chased up into his hair. "I love you, you punk."

"I love you too." Steve said, giving a hard sniff. "Jerk."

Bucky laughed a little if only to swallow back a sudden, black wave of dread that washed up from his gut. Steve having ideas like this was bad. 

Very very bad…

***

_So soon may I follow,_  
_When friendships decay,_  
_And from Love's shining circle_  
_The gems drop away._  
_When true hearts lie withered,_  
_And fond ones are flown,_  
_Oh! who would inhabit_  
_This bleak world alone?_

***


	4. And the Garden Tranquilly Dreams

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Take as long as you need.” Bruce reminded them, hands moving over dials and switches. “But I’ll bring you back here in ten seconds. Deal?”
> 
> There were nods from both as their helmets flipped up to seal over their faces. 
> 
> Bucky felt like he was standing waist deep in freezing water. The rising dread was slowly numbing him. It was like cryo all over again. But slower. And worse. He would take cryo over this. Dread like this was Hell.
> 
> “Going quantum in three… two…” Bruce counted it down and then flipped the final switch. “One. Good luck guys.”
> 
> There was a crack as the lab in the Avengers Tower dissolved from view, falling upward and upward, and suddenly Bucky was flying through a rippling blue tunnel. Or maybe falling. Tumbling through a hole in reality. He could see Steve off to his right, limbs splayed like he was in a freefall. He wanted to reach over and grab him, hold him close as they hurtled into the past. But he seemed focused on their destination, folding his body in and diving deeper. And all Bucky had to do was follow him.
> 
> It was going to be fine, he kept telling himself. This was going to be fine.
> 
> Please don’t let him do anything stupid…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy not-quite-Monday everyone! 
> 
> These updates have been getting earlier and earlier... you can thank my work schedule for that. I've got a fight choreography camp to give this week, so I'll be away from my computer most of the day. But since the chapter's ready, I didn't want to risk being super late! So here you go!
> 
> Thank you to my beta readers, KaminaDuck and musicnerd88. 
> 
> And thank you all for your encouragement, feedback, and just... your enthusiasm for this story! I hope you enjoy this installment. It's one of the longest chapters I've done for this fic. 
> 
> The chapter title is taken from the poem "The Garden in Winter" by Lucy Maud Montgomery.
> 
> Enjoy everyone! Have a great week!

***

_Frosty-white and cold it lies_   
_Underneath the fretful skies;_   
_Snowflakes flutter where the red_   
_Banners of the poppies spread,_   
_And the drifts are wide and deep_   
_Where the lilies fell asleep._

_But the sunsets o'er it throw_   
_Flame-like splendor, lucent glow,_   
_And the moonshine makes it gleam_   
_Like a wonderland of dream,_   
_And the sharp winds all the day_   
_Pipe and whistle shrilly gay._

_Safe beneath the snowdrifts lie_   
_Rainbow buds of by-and-by;_   
_In the long, sweet days of spring_   
_Music of bluebells shall ring,_   
_And its faintly golden cup_   
_Many a primrose will hold up._

 

The Garden in Winter - Lucy Maud Montgomery

 

***

Another week and a half slipped by before the time machine was finally finished. And seeing as no one was terribly keen on keeping the most powerful collection of objects in the known universe anywhere near the same postcode of Earth, Bucky and Steve met with Bruce in the Tower lab as soon as it was ready to get started on the mission. In addition to the general anxiety induced by having something that powerful locked up in one of the most densely populated places on the planet, it felt as though no one could move on until the Stones were returned. Thanos had been right. They were a temptation. Or, in this case, more like a millstone weighing around their collective necks. The sooner they were gone the better. It was just one last thread to clean up. Plus there was that whole branching timeline business that they needed to square away.

"Alright. So…" Bruce began, his voice optimistic and bright. A little forcedly so to Bucky's ears. Or maybe that was just his gloomy mood talking. "Last chance to back out. You're both returning the Stones?"

Steve turned to Bucky, with an acquiescing slouch in his shoulders. "Buck, you don't have to."

"Don't be an idiot, Steve." Bucky replied, knocking into him with his elbow. "You really think now is when I'd change my mind? After I'm already strapped into this thing?" He raised his wrist and gave the time-GPS a little shake. 

Steve gave one of his little self-deprecating smiles and said nothing else.

"So… first off, here's your particles." Bruce went on as he picked the bright red vials out of their case on the far wall. "You'll need one going and one coming." 

"How many vials do we have?" Steve asked. And at that question, Bucky felt something with sharp frigid teeth bite down somewhere in his gut. _Here we go…_

"Um… looks like there would be one extra vial." Bruce said. "I'm going to destroy it after we-"

"No, I think we should take all of it." Steve said, his voice clear and assertive.

The sensation in Bucky's chest grew anxious claws, digging them into the walls of his ribs and making him work to breathe. _Surely not…_

"But Steve, that's all there is." Bruce pointed out, his voice careful. "Pym's not making any more."

"I know."

"But can you at least tell me why? There's just the two of you."

"Just do it, Bruce." There's a fed-up sort of bite in Steve's voice that is only alleviated when he added in a more gentle tone, "Please."

Bruce looked ready to argue, but he clearly thought better of it and just heaved his huge shoulders in a sigh and shook his head. Then he passed all the vials to Steve. Bucky swiftly did math as the particles exchanged hands. There was one extra. Enough for a one way trip somewhere. That meant… if he understood this right...

_Fuck._ Steve was going to do something stupid.

"Steve, I-" Bucky started but barely got even the first two words out before Steve stopped him.

"Look, we had a slip up, last time." he said, reaching over to grip his shoulder in that easy, reassuring way he had. "This is just… insurance."

Anyone else would have been convinced and maybe even comforted, but not Bucky. "Steve, it's only enough for one of us to get back if something fucks up."

"Then that's better than neither of us." Steve said, in an assertively gentle tone that brooked no argument. Not even from Bucky, despite the icy teeth of unease twisting in his stomach, pushing him almost to the point of nausea. Steve was going to do something unaccountably stupid with that extra vial. Bucky just knew it. But he wasn't quite sure what. And that meant he couldn't do anything about it. Not yet. He just had to hope he would figure it out before it was too late to stop him.

"Oh, and while you're on Asgard, you'll need to return Thor's hammer." Bruce reminded them. 

"Right." Steve stretched out his hand, summoning Mjolnir from the lab table into his palm in a zip of ringing metal. And that did wring an unwitting smile from his lips. He almost hated to return it, because wielding this thing would never ever get old.

Maybe he could borrow Stormbreaker the next time Thor popped in for a visit…

Maybe… if...

"Just… make sure you don't leave it near anything breakable." Bruce advised with a light chuckle. "Wouldn't want to accidentally smash some sacred urn or other."

"I'll do my best." Steve replied, smile returning as he visibly shook off the swallowing dark of his thoughts. They could turn so cloudy so quickly...

Bruce didn't really seem to notice his volatile mood, but Bucky certainly did and he was having none of it. But unfortunately there was nothing to be done. This was bad. And he didn't know exactly what kind of bad, which made it that much worse. If only he could figure out what it was Steve was thinking about doing. But then, wasn't that always the problem? He could never stay ahead of Steve's bad ideas. If he could've done that, he would have saved them both an untold number of bruises and scrapes on the streets of Brooklyn.

Maybe could have kept Steve out of the war… 

But there was nothing to be done for it now. He just had to do what he always did. Just go along with it and hope he could react in time.

They were about to step up onto the platform when they heard Wanda's small voice from the doorway to the lab. "Steve?" They all three looked up to find she hadn't crossed the threshold of the lab yet. She was just poking her head around the door.

Steve's face instantly softened, arms dropping to rest by his side. It was a reflex. Instant and pure. "Hey Wanda." he greeted, his voice turning unaccountably affectionate and tenderhearted, as it always did for her. Steve loved Wanda, Bucky had learned. He looked after her like he might have a kid sister, but that didn't mean he treated her with kid gloves. He just made a concerted effort to make sure that of all the hard-edged things the world had thrown at her since she'd developed her powers, he was not going to be one of them.

"I…Oh." she'd made to speak, but faltered when she saw their GPS's on their wrists. "I'm… If I'm interfering-"

"No, not at all." Bruce assured her, beckoning for her to enter. "What do you need?"

"It's just... No, I can come back later." She said waving her hand.

"No, it's alright." Steve reassured her with that lovely, strong-jawed smile of his. "We're not keeping a schedule.

"No, I suppose not." She replied with a wry, but sad-eyed smile. She took a deep breath as she crossed the threshold and started again, words spilling faster this time as if she was squeezing them from a press. "I'm picking out flowers. For… Sunday."

"Sunday..." Bucky echoed, his brow furrowing.

"Natasha's memorial." Steve said, the words falling from his lips like motes of dust. "The dedication is on Sunday." 

Bucky swallowed hard. Oh right. Pepper was installing a memorial in the public part of the Tower downstairs. Something to educate the public on the sacrifice of Natasha Romanoff. Tony had been a public figure, and so his death in the name of saving the universe had been a very public thing. But there was no one more private than Natasha Romanoff. Even after she dumped all the SHIELD and HYDRA secrets onto the internet, and her own sordid past was on display for all the world to see, somehow she still managed to do most of her work behind the scenes. She was never on the news. Had never really been a household name. Nor had she ever wanted to be. That had never been what it was about for her, no matter who she was working for.

But seeing the heroic public face of Tony Stark mourned while the entirety of the equally heroic Natasha Romanoff was forgotten hadn't sat well with Pepper. So she'd decided an understated but distinguished public memorial was the way to go. Best of both worlds. Commemoration without flamboyance. That had been Natasha after all.

And the dedication for that was happening this weekend. When they got back. _If_ they came back. 

If Steve came back...

_This day was getting better and better,_ Bucky thought as he watched all sorts of freshly sharpened thoughts reel behind Steve's eyes. 

Wanda just nodded awkwardly in response, pretending not to notice as Bruce proceeded to make himself scarce, and the two men in front of her were both grinding their teeth until their jaw muscles bulged. She clutched at the pamphlet she held in her hands and pressed on, determined to ask her questions seeing as they'd insisted. "I'm helping Pepper with the preparations, and she said I should ask you. You know… if you'd have any input? I… asked Clint too, but he says he's terrible at these sorts of things and I just didn't know…" She stopped talking suddenly, her jaw clamping down on a wave of clearly unexpected and unwanted tears. "I didn't know if you knew… her favorite flower? Or… just might see something she'd… she would have liked? Pepper… she wants to do a wreath. Or something like that." She abruptly passed Steve a booklet from a florist in the city as she wiped hurriedly at her eyes. 

The glossy pages were covered with photographs of every kind of flower, all in brilliant colors. It was almost galling in its garishness. Steve didn't think anything should be so brightly colored. Not right now. Maybe not ever.

He abruptly remembered Natasha at Peggy's funeral, when she'd paused to smell a white rose on the wreath beside the casket. The memory was on him so suddenly and vividly, it was like someone had kicked on a film reel behind the divide of his skull. Natasha had actually smiled as she inhaled the scent. The first person he'd seen smile all day that day. It was as if in that brief drawing of perfumed breath nothing in the world existed but her and that single blossom. Not the casket in front of her. Or the Accords in Vienna. Not even Steve, really. None of it. Just her and a flower. Just for a moment.

"Seems a shame." Natasha had said when she caught him looking. "To have flowers at a funeral. The dead person can't smell them, and people think you're weird if you stop to enjoy them."

Steve swallowed so hard he almost broke a tooth. "Can I get back to you tomorrow?" He asked, giving Wanda his best attempt at a smile.

She pressed her lips together and gave him an understanding and tearful nod. "Of course." she replied. "Is this a test run, or are you- you know." she inclined her head towards the case at Bruce's feet.

"Returning the Stones today." Steve said with a smile that was more grimace than anything else. "Gotta set everything back right. Clip all the branches."

Bucky nearly made a sound of protest at his phrasing, but he managed to swallow it down. Steve was planning something. He just knew it. He was probably the only one who knew it, but if he accused Steve of it now, he might risk getting left behind.

But Wanda… she cocked her head and her bright eyes narrowed for the briefest second as she regarded Steve. It was a fleeting expression. Gone in a flash. Just a flicker of intelligence, and then she smiled in a perfect mirror of Pepper Potts's calm CEO smile. "I know you will." she said quietly, before taking the pamphlet from him and leaving.

Bruce quietly shook his head as he watched her go. "I adore Wanda more than life. She's been such a help in the lab, and she makes paprikash like you wouldn't believe. But when she does... that…?" he vaguely waved a pencil in the general direction of her departure. "It still weirds me out. Never know if she's seeing or… y'know… _seeing..._ "

Steve just snorted and shook his head, but Bucky's eyes stayed on her until she was all the way past the windows. She'd as good as confirmed his suspicions. Steve was thinking about doing something stupid and reckless. And now Bucky didn't have time to chase her down and talk the truth of what she'd seen out of her.

_Please don't let him do anything stupid…_ Bucky prayed to no one in particular. _Please oh please…_

"Alright… Well, I see no reason to drag our feet if you guys are ready." Bruce said with a clap of his enormous hands before bending to scoop up the metal case housing the Infinity Stones. "Shall we get rid of these damn things?" 

Steve gave a tight nod as he hung Mjolnir on his belt and accepted the Stones. "Let's do this."

Both he and Bucky tapped their wrist-mounted GPSs and the quantum suits spread out over their bodies like a second skin.

"Now remember." Bruce said, passing them the briefcase. "You're just returning the Stones and the Hammer. Nothing fancy. No changing anything. Especially with the Soul Stone. We don't really know how that exchange works, so it's best to take Clint at his word. And Natasha too. Can't be undone. Just return the Stones and come back home."

"Got it." Steve confirmed, his voice tight as he settled the metal case by his side.

"You sure we need to take that extra vial?" Bucky asked, hoping the desperation of the question didn't cling to his voice.

"Like I said. We fucked it up last time and could have used an extra run. We got lucky that more Pym particles and the Stone we were missing happened to be in the same time and place. I'd rather not get lucky again."

"Look that Pym guy is back from being ash… maybe we could-"

"I already asked." Bruce cut in. "Begged even. But Howard Pym isn't making more of this stuff. Given what it can be used for? It's the new plutonium. Hell, it's the new vibranium. Gotta keep it out of the wrong hands and the best way is to just not have it."

Bucky wanted to tear his hair out. But he didn't. It wouldn't do any good. "Alright." he huffed softly. "Let's get this over with."

"So we're going to start backwards and work our way to the present." Steve confirmed. "So that's… Space Stone first. Lock coordinates." 

"Coordinates locked." Bucky replied dispassionately. God, he knew something was about to happen. Something bad. Steve was never this "forward ho" except when whatever he was doing was terribly ill advised. Bucky's skin itched with inaction. But what could he do? What could he do but wait and hope he was fast enough when the time came.

"Step up on the platform. Wait for my mark." Bruce instructed.

They did so, exchanging glances as they took their position. Bucky knew Steve could see the anxiety rolling behind his eyes in waves.

"It's gonna be okay, Buck." he said, reaching out and grabbing his hand.

Bucky's throat seized around a response. All he could do was swallow and give the most unconvincing nod in history. And squeeze Steve's hand for all it was worth. Maybe if he held on tight enough...

"I can go by myself if you don't-"

"No no, Cap." Bruce cut in before Bucky could respond. "You said so yourself. Nobody goes into the past alone. In case there are screw ups. No changing plans now."

"Right." Steve said, visibly shaking himself.

"Ready?" Bruce asked, eyes flicking between them.

Bucky most certainly was not ready. Not as ready as Steve looked. He replayed the conversation from earlier that week in his head, and prayed he had gotten through to him about this lunacy of going back to the forties. It was madness. He wanted to scream that. Loudly and hysterically. He wanted to tell Bruce to just let him take the Stones back himself, because Steve was going to do something unaccountably idiotic.

But he joined in Steve's response, because there was nothing to be done. Not now anyway. "Ready." 

"Take as long as you need." Bruce reminded them, hands moving over dials and switches. "But I'll bring you back here in ten seconds. Deal?"

There were nods from both as their helmets flipped up to seal over their faces. Inside the claustrophobic suit, Bucky felt like he was standing waist deep in freezing water. The rising dread was slowly numbing him. It was like cryo all over again. But slower. And worse. He would take cryo over this. Dread like this was a special sort of Hell.

"Alright. Going quantum in three… two…" Bruce counted it down and then flipped the final switch. "One. Good luck guys."

There was a crack as the lab in the Avengers Tower dissolved from view, falling upward and upward, and suddenly Bucky was flying through a rippling blue tunnel. Or maybe falling. Tumbling through a hole in reality. He could see Steve off to his right, limbs splayed like he was in a freefall. He wanted to reach over and grab him. To hold him close as they hurtled into the past. But Steve seemed focused on their destination, folding his body inward and diving deeper into the past. And all Bucky had to do was follow him.

_It was going to be fine,_ he kept telling himself. _This was going to be fine._

_Please don't let him do anything stupid…_

 

***

 

The plan of returning the Stones in chronological order left the Soul and Power Stones for last. Bucky had never been to space, and Steve had only been the one time five years prior, so it was something of an adventure unto itself. Though it was much less exciting than it should have been, given the circumstances, but at least it wasn't the bad sort of exciting. Their space ship's navigation was preprogrammed. They were quite literally just along for the ride once they popped through the time portal.

Morag wasn't that jarring to Bucky. The terrain (minus the imposing and ornate temple, of course) actually reminded him of some of the wilder, more barren places in northern Russia. The foreboding mountainous reaches where things and people were sent to be forgotten. Or hidden, in his case. The perpetual darkness and crevasses full of strange rodent-lizards were a little disquieting, but after fighting the full force of Thanos' army, it was nothing he couldn't shrug off. These critters at least seemed to be easily dissuaded by a swift kick to send them flying off into the gloomy dark again.

But Vormir? That was another story entirely. 

Alien was too clinical a word. It was boldly, almost purposefully beautiful, but also barren and forbidding. There was nothing alive on the planet's surface that they could see. It was covered by an intricate pattern of vast rolling dunes composed of wind-sculpted white sand and striated with shallow pools of clear water. 

At least… Bucky thought it was sand and he thought it was water. And he thought it was white. It was hard to tell in the very strange light that pervaded the area. The sky was largely occluded by a thick layer of swirling indigo clouds as dark as ink. But shining through the vacant patches was a rich salmon pink sun, perfectly eclipsed by the planet's moon. The slivers of light that cut through the canopy of clouds painted eerie swatches of rose-colored light across everything, hanging most brightly on all the sharp edges. The crests of the dunes. The ripples in the water. The cut of Steve's jaw. The angle of his shoulders… taut and stiff… and dutiful…

Bucky sighed and the sound was carried away on the prevailing wind as he resumed scanning the surreal landscape. The clock was ticking down...

Aside from the bizarre topography and the perpetual eclipse, which to Bucky seemed unsettlingly like a great lidless eye peering out over the horizon, there was only one thing that truly drew his gaze. A twin-peaked structure perched high atop the only mountain visible. "Temple" was the word that came to Bucky's mind, though not in the Western sense. More like one of those temples in the stories of Eastern philosophy… the ones with an old guru at the top willing to impart wisdom to anyone willing to make the climb.

"That's it." Steve said, pointing towards it. "Or at least I'm guessing. It's the only thing I see that fits Clint's description."

"Yeah… if I were going to stash a powerful artifact from the beginning of creation somewhere, that would definitely be in the top ten." Bucky remarked dryly. "So just… we climb to the top? And then what? Toss the Stone back over the edge?"

"I dunno." Steve said, hefting the case a little. "Maybe we'll know how to return it once we get up there. Clint said something about a guide. Maybe they can tell us something about how to return it."

_But that's all we're doing, right Steve?_ Bucky swallowed the question along with a wave of anxious nausea. _Don't you nurse that guilty conscience on me now. Not here. Not in a place like this._ It occurred to him to ask to carry the Stone, but Steve would see right through it. No, it was still a waiting game.

So they trudged over the sand and through the pools of water until the dunes slowly gave way to a steady incline of stone that marked the path up the mountain. It was little more than switch-backed trail worn by many feet and flanked by trees, stunted and long dead, that led them up and up and up the rocky face. The wind blew harder, until they could barely talk over the noise. So they just walked, and Bucky nursed the sourness in his stomach.

They paused to catch their breaths at a marginally sheltered turn of a switchback that sported a particularly gorgeous view of the surrounds. Under different circumstances Bucky would have found it a thrilling sight. Beautiful even. The rolling dunes striped with thin pools that reflected the brilliantly colored sky like mirrors. Everywhere… the sky, the land, the air… it was all swirled tendrils of blushing rose and deep indigo. So unbelievably beautiful. There were no sunsets like this at home. If it even was sunset. Maybe it was morning. Could anyone tell here? Did it even matter? Maybe the orbit and the clouds and such meant this planet existed in a perfect stage of twilight always...

But his musings about the view could not permanently sway Bucky from his worry. He only had eyes for Steve, who stared out over the landscape with a knot in his jaw that could cut diamond. 

_Just pitch the fucker into the abyss and let's go home, Steve…_ Bucky thought desperately. _Don't… don't do whatever it is you're thinking about doing…_

"Welcome Steven, son of Sarah. And James, son of Florence." A voice that seemed to be more than one voice entoned from behind them.

They both turned on the spot, Bucky reflexively stepping in front of Steve with metal arm brandished to catch or block any incoming assault. But none came. At least not immediately. Instead, a black shape floated towards them down the twisting path, seeming to have emerged from the craggy shadows themselves. If Bucky believed in ghosts he would have said that's what this was. It certainly looked like some kind of a campfire tale come to life. All that was visible in the purpled darkness were the edges of its tattered hooded robe which fluttered against the wind as it moved. It floated, actually, a good three or four feet off the ground… and that voice. It was spectral and unearthly and yet… the accent...

"You know us?" Steve said, watching as the creature descended the stairs towards them, still keeping to the shadow of the rocks.

"It is my curse to know all who journey to this place." It said.

"Didn't Clint say this thing knew their names too?" Bucky hissed over his shoulder. 

"It is my curse to know those who come for the Stone, but that is not why you have come. And thus, I do not know you because I am fated to." It landed with barely a sound over the howling wind, and stepped forward into a shaft of eclipsed sunlight. "But that does not mean I do not know you, meine Herren." 

Bucky's frown deepened, recollection itching in his brain as the specter reached up with a skeletal hand to brush back its deep set cowl and reveal a stunningly familiar face. A red skull, with sunken eyes and pointed cheekbones. A familiar face no less shockingly recognizable than it had been seventy years ago, but it was no longer smooth and shiny but rather weathered and worn with age.

"Schmidt!" Steve's voice thundered over the howl of the wind as he started forward, but Bucky's other arm was there across his chest to stop him from charging.

"What the fuck?" Bucky said, planting himself even more squarely between Steve and Schmidt. 

"You died. I saw it." Steve growled, jabbing a finger in the air at him. "Sucked out into space." 

"I was lost to space when you activated the Tesseract." Schmidt stated, taking another unperturbed step towards the two men. "But because of my own enhancements I did not die, though my time in the void did not leave me wholly unchanged. I drifted. I became less, and I became more, and I was eventually picked up. And then left in the skull of a dead god which was full of all sorts of misplaced unfortunates such as myself. As well as… more learned and well-traveled sorts. It was there that I heard of a power much like the Tesseract and through great personal cost and endeavor came here to find it."

"Yeah? How'd that work out for you?" Steve sniped.

"About as well as you clearly would expect." Schmidt sneered back at him. "I once again came searching for a power I did not fully understand and so I paid the price. I had no sacrifice, but the power of the Soul Stone still called to me. And so here I remained… an unwitting guide to those who would seek the Stone's power. But… you are too late. The Stone is not here."

"We know." Bucky said, still holding position between Steve and their old nemesis. "We have it."

"You have it?" Red Skull inclined his head in question. "But you are not the one who left with it. And it has barely been hours since he departed."

"We've come to bring it back." Steve said, pulling himself out of his defensive half-crouch and squaring his massive shoulders.

Red Skull cocked his head just slightly. "So soon? I sincerely hope you don't believe the sacrifice will be returned to you."

Bucky could almost hear Steve's teeth grinding. "I know it won't."

Red Skull almost smiled. "Not just a pretty face after all."

"Can you take us to where we're supposed to return this thing or not?" Bucky snapped. "I thought you said you were some kind of guide."

"Even though you know the soul that was traded for it will not be returned to you?" Schmidt seemed to savor the inquiry "You would not keep its power for yourself?".

"Do you know the way or don't you?" Steve responded, stepping forward and bumping into Bucky's outstretched arm again.

Schmidt blinked impassively before extending his bony arm up the path. "Very well. Follow me."

Why exactly there needed to be a guide for this trek, Bucky didn't understand. It was just a single winding staircase. No branches in the path, though even if there had been, who was the idiot that didn't assume the right place was the giant fucking temple on the top of the tallest mountain in view?

But still, it seemed strangely improper to forge ahead of Red Skull. So they climbed and climbed behind him in the increasingly brutal wind. It grew colder until they could see their breath in front of their faces, and eventually it began to snow. Or at least it looked like snow. 

Up and up they went until at last they reached the peak, which flattened into a carved terrace. On either side of the path, two towers of jet black stone stretched up into the occluded sky, marking the way to the place where the Soul Stone should rest. 

Once past the towers, Bucky skirted the causeway, taking in the scene slowly. He looked for recognizable symbols in the carvings. For movement in the shadows. And he waited for Red Skull to try something. He wanted the bastard to try something. He'd love an excuse to work out some of his viciously circling anxiety on his bony face. 

But Steve? Steve was Steve, and he walked right up to the terrace edge and looked straight down.

Steve didn't know if he expected to actually see her at the bottom or not, but her corpse wasn't there. Just a dark smudge left to fade at the bottom of a very long fall with a very hard stop. 

"You knew her, too." Schmidt's snake-like voice whispered. "Natasha, daughter of Ivan."

Steve didn't dignify him with a reply. He just set the case at his feet and popped it open to reveal the final Stone to be returned. It glowed a faint but vivid orange in the dimness of Vormir's sky as he pulled it from its resting place. But he also reached in his pocket, retrieving something with the same hand that held the Stone. Bucky trapsed closer when he saw this, his hackles raised as he watched the gears turn in Steve's head. Had he just switched something? Had he...

_Oh no…_

_This was it._

"What is that?" Red Skull hissed, also eyeing Steve's closed fist.

Steve swallowed as he collected his thoughts, the knot in his jaw working in the articulating shadows. "Clint said that the Stone required a sacrifice," he said, almost so softly that the words were blown away in the wind. "And that the sacrifice, once made, cannot be undone."

"An everlasting exchange." Schmidt said formally. "The loss of that which you love for the power of the Soul Stone."

"An exchange." Steve echoed, his fist still tightly closed. "A bargain."

"Correct."

Steve's blue eyes, washed gray in the arcane light, slid sharply over to Red Skull. "Bargains can be renegotiated."

"Steve, what are you doing?" Bucky said, panic starting to thin his voice. He noted how close Steve was to the edge, and suddenly a whole new reel of sickening scenarios began to play in his head.

"You said it had to be someone you love. You can't just push anyone off the edge of this thing to get the Stone, right? It has to be someone you love. A _life_ that you love. But it's not explicitly stated that they have to die. Or that anyone has to die. That's just one way of doing it. A soul for a soul."

Red Skull's paper thin eyelids narrowed into slits as he listened. "One must sacrifice a life that they love. Or else I would have had the Stone decades ago."

"Steve…" Bucky pleaded, not even sure what he was asking for. Just for Steve to stop? _Please stop… just ditch the thing and let's go back home…_

But Steve didn't stop. He kept those keen, now wild eyes on Red Skull. "That little detail leads me to believe that since it can't be bought merely with blood, that blood is not actually required. It has to be bought with more than that."

"Steve…" Bucky was shaking his head, moving closer and closer. Maybe he could grab him. Pull him away from the edge. "Whatever it is you're doing-"

Bucky's words were cut short when Steve turned up his palm over the depths of Vormir to reveal both the Stone and the extra vial of Pym particles. He blinked at it, panic dulling his thoughts.

_What was he doing?_

"This is a life." Steve said, his voice still soft, but grief coiled there like a viper. "This is the life I would have had with a wonderful woman who I love very much to this day. The life you stole from me when you left me no choice but to bury myself in the northern Atlantic. I love the idea of the person I would have been. Could have been, were it not for you." Steve was spitting the words out like broken teeth. "I have been trying for the better part of a decade to find that person again. That better version of myself. And this vial is my chance to go back and have it. To live the life I was supposed to have. Maybe even right a few of the wrongs. No getting frozen in ice for decades. No dead best friend. No Loki. No Thanos. And no _fucking_ HYDRA." He looked to Bucky, his expression ferocious and nigh unhinged. "If I can't fix it now, I could go back and fix it then. This vial is a life free from the guilt of this one. Maybe I'll make different mistakes. I probably will. But it wouldn't matter because I could be _him._ The man I was supposed to be." He turned back to Red Skull, his eyes blazing platinum-bright. "But I'm giving that up. For a mistake and guilt-ridden life as the man I've become. A life with the man who taught me to never give up, and the woman who taught me how to move on. Who helped me build a life and a family in the here and now. One that I've personally helped to wreck and rebuild again and again. That's the bargain. My old life for Natasha, daughter of Ivan. A soul for a soul. A life for a life."

Red Skull blinked twice in shock before he turned over one spectral hand to gesture at the crevasse. "I suppose you can try."

Bucky reeled. For a panic-stricken second he'd thought Steve was going to jump. Or pitch the Stone and jump back to '45 without him. Or… something...

But no… that wasn't it at all. He'd brought the extra Pym particles because he _had_ thought of using them to go back to 1945. He'd really considered it. Maybe was still considering it. Enough that he could believe that it potentially counted as a life for him. The chance to be with Peggy. The chance to save him from HYDRA. The chance to be that golden American hero. All of it. Steve had calculated the cost and weighed the options, and Bucky knew he was about to watch him tip the scales.

But still, Steve wavered for a moment with his hand outstretched, unaccountable power and infinite futures balanced on his open palm. He didn't know if it would work, and yet... And yet, even without being certain, here Steve stood over the precipice to Hell. Orpheus made flesh. Singing and not looking back. Wanting Natasha back more than anything. Even if it meant the possibility of living out the rest of this life with both his grief and his guilt. With Bucky's arm staring him in the face each morning, and passing by Natasha's memorial every single day. He had to try. If he'd learned anything from his flawed existence, it was that he could only live with his failures if he tried.

The glass of the vial had grown warm in his hand as he'd deliberated. He was clutching it again, tighter than he meant to. What if this didn't work? Could he really live in a world where he had failed Natasha so spectacularly? Failed Bucky. And Tony. And Peggy. And everyone who he was supposed to help. Everyone who believed in him. He could just leave the Stone and go back to before he failed. To when he could set things right… at least in one universe.

But then, he looked over at Bucky. And Bucky of course… he was Bucky. He was helplessly reading every line in his face and flicker of his eyes. He'd worked out the plan. Worked out why Steve thought this might work, and he was content to stand there, hands knotted into fists at his side, and let him choose. Let him choose between the marred future with him and a fantasy world where he made believe he could solve his past mistakes.

And when the choice was truly his, Steve suddenly knew. As if by flipping an imaginary coin. Somewhere in the aerial spinning, the truth was made clear. Leaving this all behind… this future… this… past really? It would only sour anything he might be headed towards with Peggy. Any future endeavor. It would poison it... creeping like gangrene through everything until he was catatonic with grief and guilt all over again. He couldn't do it. He couldn't live with not trying to save Natasha. Because Bucky was still here. If nothing else… after all. Even when he'd had nothing, he'd always had Bucky. 

And Peggy… she'd lived an amazing life without him. And that would just be the way that it would be. 

No. There would be no going back. No do overs. No second chances. He would trust to hope, and live with the consequences of that trust. Because Bucky would be enough. He always had been. And hadn't he said he would have endured HYDRA a thousand times over if it meant he got to mourn Natasha with Steve?

Maybe they wouldn't have to mourn...

_Everybody comes home._ Bruce's words came back to him and he let them curl in his mind and in his heart like incense. _Everybody._

Steve opened his hand again, joints fairly creaking with the force, and he let both Stone and vial slip over his palm. The Stone fell with astonishing speed, plummeting down the cliff face like a comet. But the vial hung in the air for a moment. Long enough it seemed that he might grab it again. Long enough for faith to falter if it was going to falter.

But he was Steve Rogers. His faith did not falter, though he felt the loss keenly.

And just like that, both were gone. Lost to the wind and the darkness below. The Soul Stone vanished on impact without so much as a splinter of sound. But Steve heard the vial hit the bottom. A thin whisper of shattering glass and a sputter of viscous liquid across stone. 

He reached over immediately and grabbed Bucky's hand, feeling him sag against him in relief as they crushed together in a strange, not quite embrace over the yawning maw of the abyss. Steve closed his eyes against a great flood of tears, feeling Bucky's fall against his chest as he sucked in a great, galloping sob. He squeezed his eyes closed until they hurt. Until he was surrounded by nothing but the moment of his decision. Just darkness… and the buffeting wind… and Bucky's labored breathing...

And then… 

There was a thunderous crack that nearly deafened them both. And they looked up from their embrace and saw white lights streaking upward from the towers, to bleach the clouds and brighten the landscape. It seemed like it should fade, like a flash of lightning, but instead it spread and grew brighter. Until they were squinting. Until they were hiding their eyes behind their hands. 

Until their vision was occluded into nothing...

***

_Though the winds are keen and chill_   
_Roses' hearts are beating still,_   
_And the garden tranquilly_   
_Dreams of happy hours to be-_   
_In the summer days of blue_   
_All its dreamings will come true._

***


	5. Alone in the Garden

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She lets herself imagine it… them with an apartment in Brooklyn again. Just like old times. Their old times. Not hers. It would be a small place, but with tall windows that they would leave open all the time so that the sunlight could spill into the apartment in wide golden swathes. Maybe they would get that record player back from Wakanda. The one Bucky had bought them for Christmas. She can see them now, dancing in the living room, revolving slowly in a brilliant shaft of sunshine with barely a breath of space between them. No room for anything or anyone anymore. There would be no need after all… not anymore…
> 
> Whatever it takes. 
> 
> She reminds herself of this whenever her fancies make her sad. This is what it took. And it had worked. She knows that now. It’s a sad existence for her… spinning out time with pointless training, hollow remembering, and aching whimsy. But it’s only a sad existence for her. The transaction had gone through. Her life for the power to set things right. The receipt was in the trillions of lives she would never get to see…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Monday, everyone!
> 
> I come bearing a new chapter. It's shorter... the shortest in the series I think, but it is by far my favorite. It's one of the first scenes I really conceived of when I started thinking about how in the hell I was going to fix all of this. So I'm very excited (and a little nervous) for you to get to read it.
> 
> The poetry and chapter title are excerpts from the poem "In The Garden" by Ella Wheeler Wilcox.
> 
> Many thanks to KaminaDuck and musicnerd88 for beta reading for me.
> 
> And many thanks to all of you for your kind words and your encouragement over the past few weeks. I've just been so touched by everyone's excitement about this piece. So thank you so so so much.
> 
> Onward to the fic! See you all next week! Only two more chapters to go after this!

***

_One moment alone in the garden,_   
_Under the August skies;_   
_The moon had gone but the stars shone on, -_   
_Shone like your beautiful eyes._   
_Away from the glitter and gaslight,_   
_Alone in the garden there,_   
_While the mirth of the throng, in laugh and song,_   
_Floated out on the air._

_You looked down through the starlight,_   
_And I looked up at you;_   
_And a feeling came that I could not name, -_   
_Something strange and new._   
_Friends of a few weeks only, -_   
_Why should it give me pain_   
_To know you would go in the morrow,_   
_And would not come again?_

***

The quiet of her amber prison is not as grating as Natasha thought it would be by now. Whenever now is. It's become increasingly difficult to tell.

It's not actually completely silent either, she eventually learns. If she listens closely, she can hear the water lapping against the building. And there's an occasional breeze that's sometimes strong enough to make the glass in the windows creak and whistle just like they had in life. Whatever force it is that created this place, it didn't skimp on the details.

She likes those times the best. It's a nice little reprieve. She feels like she might still be alive then. Like this place might still be alive. Like one of her teammates might come around the corner at any moment. She can imagine it. And sometimes she lets herself imagine it. She can almost hear their footsteps echoing on the tile, even though her own are faint and dull. Perhaps it's Rhodey and Nebula comparing war stories. Or maybe Thor and Steve, still sweaty from a few rounds in the training yard. Clint fresh off the range with his bow slung across his back. Tony and Bruce speaking in a language of theories and numbers all their own. Bucky headed… somewhere. Even though he never lived in the facility, she can still imagine him there with her the way it always should have been. She can imagine him passing her in the hallway with a wickedly sweet smile for her eyes only. 

With no way to mark time, she's lost all sense of how long she's been here. She has no way to ground herself, and if she's being honest, there's no real reason to. No one is coming for her now. Tony had only confirmed what she'd already suspected was true. In fact, he had been a very pleasant surprise. 

But there would be no more surprises. No more familiar faces come for one last conversation with their departed comrade. There's no way to send a secret radio signal. No eventual heroic rescue. Now that the Stones have been used and the universe set right, it's just her and this strange burnished husk of her home for all eternity. Just her, and the ghosts of her old life. Her family is gone.

And in truth, so is she. 

She's given up on walking outside. She never finds anything or anyone. Just more featureless water for miles and miles until she decides to turn back. For awhile, she spends her time in the training room. It feels less claustrophobic in there. Plus she can move about. Run drills, even if it's just to entertain herself. If only she had a way to keep time or chart progress. She might be able to see if she can make any improvements to her body or her efficiency.

She doubts it though. She doesn't even sweat anymore. And after awhile, even drills lose their charm. Lose their ability to distract and keep her from feeling like the world is closing in around her… and like she might drown in that one inch of water surrounding her.

Now, when it truly gets silent… when the wind isn't blowing and she can feel the stifling quiet beginning to crowd her, she lets it chase her up to Steve's room. Chase her up to where she felt most at home in this place. At least in life. She curls up in the window where his desk used to be, and stares out over the endless shallow sea that surrounds her. She feels closest to him here. To her old life. To the woman she had tried to be both with him and for him. That woman who had spent so much time in this room. Discovering him. Discovering herself. And discovering what all this Avengers business really meant when the world didn't need to be saved. At one point in time, she'd slept here more than she did her own suite. 

And often when she's here, curled up in the window, Natasha plays a little game with herself. Just a little fanciful daydreaming to pass the endless supply of time. She lets herself wonder what Steve is doing now. If he's still mourning, or if he and Bucky have begun to move on with their lives. Together at last… the way they were meant to be.

The way _she_ meant for them to be.

She lets herself imagine it… them with an apartment in Brooklyn again. Just like old times. _Their_ old times. Not hers. It would be a small place, but with tall windows that they would leave open all the time so that the sunlight could spill into the apartment in wide golden swathes. Maybe they would get that record player back from Wakanda. The one Bucky had bought them for Christmas. She can see them now, dancing in the living room, revolving slowly in a brilliant shaft of sunshine with barely a breath of space between them. No room for anything or anyone anymore. There would be no need after all… 

Not anymore...

_Whatever it takes._ She reminds herself of this whenever her fancies make her sad. This is what it took. And it _had_ worked. She knows that now. It's a sad existence for her… spinning out time with pointless training, hollow remembering, and aching whimsy. But it's only a sad existence for _her._ The transaction had gone through. Her life for the power to set things right. The receipt was in the trillions of lives she would never get to see…

Wakanda with their king.

Clint reunited with his family on their farm.

Bucky and Steve dancing together again in Brooklyn…

All it had cost was her life. And Tony's. But that's not a bad bargain as bargains on that sort of scale go, she thinks. She's definitely been known to gamble more for less.

_It's alright,_ she tells herself. _Whatever it takes._

"Agent Romanoff." A harrowingly familiar voice pronounces her name into the stillness of the room with emmaculate care.

She starts and frowns, rising and turning to see…

Loki. Wearing his suit of green and black leather and trademark smirk. He's standing just inside the room, only a few strides away from her, looking much as he did in his prison on the helicarrier. 

Exactly, actually. Though she didn't entirely have the presence of mind to look for details.

She stumbles back a step, one hand flying out to catch herself on the plate glass. "What…?"

Loki raises his hands in supplication as he starts towards her. "Let me assure you, I am not truly as I appear." 

"Liar." she says, her lips drawing back off her teeth. "What the fuck are you doing here, Loki?"

Loki halts a few steps into the room and looks down at his hands, turning them palm up and palm down a few times. Almost as if he's seeing them for the first time. Then he shrugs, nonplussed but still somewhat unbothered by her reaction. "The owner of this apparition might've been a liar. But I assure you I am not them. I've merely… adopted this guise from your memories, apparently without looking closely enough. Had I understood it to arouse such hostility, I might've chosen another. But this "Loki" as you've named them… their question seemed earnest and honest in your recollection, and your conversation civil."

Her eyes narrow. "What are you talking about?"

"In all my time waiting for seekers at the Temple of the Soul Stone, I've seen many things." The entity wearing Loki's appearance begins to traipse into the room again, but more cautiously this time. Circling her at a distance to avoid agitation. "I've seen the Stone's power corrupt. I've seen its cost drive beings stronger than the Mad Titan to madness far greater than his. I've even seen it returned a handful of times. Cast back into the vault for another to earn. But I've never seen someone come back to alter the exchange. Reverse it? Beg? Plead and weep? Certainly. But grief does not buy power here. Only a beloved life. No one's ever undone the exchange. Nor even made an honest attempt. I must say… it's been a very long time since I've been surprised."

Her frown deepens, cutting sharp lines into her face. "That's because you can't. It _can't_ be undone. That's what the dude with the red skull face said."

"Quite right, it can't be undone. But… an unexamined loophole is that it can, perhaps, be renegotiated."

"What are you talking about?" She spits. "Who are you?"

"I am… this." The apparition of Loki spreads their hands as if to indicate a world wider than the endless expanse beyond the walls. And yet one contained within its endlessness. "I am the exchange and the money-changer. Buyer and seller. The prize and its keeper, all in one."

"You're… the Stone?"

"That is a very minimal way to describe it." They say with a slight tilt of their head. "I am the Stone, yes, but I'm also its ability to discern whether a sacrifice is worthy of the Stone's power."

"So, why do you look like Loki?"

"Because I am here to ask you the question he once asked of you. A question about the one you recalled just before your life was exchanged by Clint Barton for the Soul Stone."

His phrasing sours her expression further, but she doesn't press the issue. "And what is that?" she asks instead. 

"Is this love, Agent Romanoff?" he asks in an immaculate approximation of Loki's sneering tone. 

"Is _what_ love?" she bites back, hackles raised as she plants her feet under herself.

"All of it. Is it love that threw you over that cliff?"

"It had to be done. The world-"

"You cannot lie to me." The apparition censures her like the fall of an axe through a green branch. "You did it to save Clint Barton and James Barnes, and you did it to save Steven Rogers. Your whole world, nay the lives of half of the _universe_ were at stake, and yet I saw the final thoughts that fled from your mind before it cracked across the flagstones of my resting place. You thought of them, not any noble attachment to the greater good. You thought of three men, hardly remarkable in the wide multiverse. Not even more remarkable than yourself. And yet they were your final thought. You can feign nobility of purpose as much as you like, but I am not fooled.

"That is why I appear before you now as I do. Because Loki of Asgard once asked you if it was love that had you bargaining for one life with so many others at stake. And I am asking now because it's not just you, I'm afraid. Not just you demanding fate bend to the will of your heart regardless of what the laws of the universe may dictate. Another has come in the name of retrieving that which was taken from them. So I will ask a second time. Is this love, Agent Romanoff? Is this love that has someone knocking on the door of oblivion with trinkets in hand hoping to quite literally buy you back from me?"

Her mind spins for a panicked moment. Who would have come? They would've needed to return the Stones to their proper place in the timeline… had they let Clint come back? 

_Shit._ Had Clint come back, and now he was trying to save her instead of just putting the Stone back? Had Bruce and Tony not been able to convince him not to try?

God, he always was such an idiot.

"He loves you. He's giving up his future to do it," the apparition was still talking as her mind reeled. "Though… that's not entirely accurate. It's himself that he's giving up."

"Speak. Sense." she barks, the words hissing with sibillant anger and desperation. "What is going on out there?"

"Someone has come for you," The Stone's apparition answers simply. "But it's not your Agent Barton, who took the Stone from here. Someone's come with a far deeper sacrifice than one merely of blood. Someone's come and dashed their very hope upon the rocks, not even knowing if it would be enough, and I simply wanted to gaze upon the face of the woman that was worth such a journey. Worth such a sacrifice. He held the literal power of Life itself in his hands, plus a way back to a life and a love he had been denied... but instead of taking it? Instead of making the life for himself that he always wanted, he just wanted you." They shake their head with good-natured dismay. "Perhaps there should have been a seventh Stone after all. There nearly was, but I was ethereal and unpredictable enough for everyone's taste."

"There…" Natasha shakes her head so hard that her ears ring. "There was almost a seventh Stone?"

"Yes. For there is something that transcends all six of us… making us but pale baubles in its wake. Even without physical form, it still shapes the universe to its whims and, being so inconsistent and wild, exasperates us all. So I will ask you again, Agent Romanoff. For the third time. Is this love?"

Natasha draws another breath to answer, but she has no idea what to say. She only has more questions. Who has come? And with what? And with _whom?_ Who is about to be thrown down the temple face so she can have her indecent and red-limned excuse of a life back? 

But before she can give voice to any of it, the room grows impossibly bright. Her vision fades to white and suddenly… she's gone again, just as before. The world is bleached and featureless, so blinding that she has to cinch her eyes closed against it, but it's no use. The brightness burns straight through her eyelids and into the back of her skull, whiting out her mind and searing every coherent thought away. 

And once again, she is alone. Floating in a perfect white void with not even the steady lap of water to keep her company.

***

_The river that rolls between us_   
_Can never be crossed, I know,_   
_For the waters are deep and the shores are steep,_   
_And a maelstrom whirls below;_   
_But I think we shall always remember,_   
_Though we both may strive to forget,_   
_How you looked in my eyes, 'neath the August skies,_   
_After the moon had set._

***


	6. To the Girl in the Garden

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The first thing Natasha became aware of was that the light engulfing her had begun to shift and change. Slowly at first… little reprieves in the glare before it would come back again, making her eyelids scrunch down tight. After an indeterminable amount of time spent drifting through endless white, Natasha found she could bear open her eyes again. The light was still blinding, but it was different. Warm and golden, but not the over-saturated gold of her strange non-life. It was bright and buttery, and warm on her face, scintillating and shifting across her vision in a seemingly random dance. After drawing a few calibrating breaths, she realized that she was lying down, curled on her side with what felt like a mattress beneath her. 
> 
> She sat bolt upright, swinging her legs off the edge of the bed beneath, and sucking in a startled gasp at the discovery. And it struck her that she could hear it. That she could hear herself draw breath. It shocked her that she could hear anything so clearly. The bed springs made a sound. The shuffle of her feet on the hardwood floor made a sound. She could even hear a bird singing outside the window… 
> 
> Outside… 
> 
> Outside…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Monday everyone!
> 
> I come with a much longer update to make up for the shorter one last week. Thank you all so much for your patience and your kind words about this fic. I'm just so wonderfully overwhelmed by the response!
> 
> Many thanks as always to my beta-readers KaminaDuck and musicnerd88.
> 
> And thank you all for reading. For your feedback. For your comments. For coming and chatting with me on Tumblr. Seriously, if you want to ask me about my work, I'm happy to chat. 
> 
> There is one more chapter after this one for this fic. Then the next thing coming for this series is a fic called "A Stolen Season" which takes place during the five year gap of Avengers: Endgame. I know a lot of people have been enjoying my characterization and internal dialogue for Natasha... this fic is definitely for y'all. I lack one chapter on it and I hope to have it publishing by August at the very latest. And if you're a HBO Chernobyl fan, I've got a fic for that coming down the pipe very soon... looks to be pretty long. I'm not even halfway on the draft and it's already 26k. @_@ Watch my Tumblr @littlethingwithfeathers for writing updates for all my stuff.
> 
> Thank you all again for your support and enthusiasm. Enjoy and have a lovely week everyone! See you on Monday!

***

_It's clear as tattoos on your eyes:_   
_A story not heard in the bright palace light._   
_Can only be told as a secret of night._   
_The girl in the garden and I…_

_From a Knife to a Lantern and back, back again,_   
_She closes her eyes and weaves wonders._   
_They hang in the air, hold my breath like a hunter._   
_The girl in the garden and I..._

***

The first thing Natasha became aware of was that the light engulfing her had begun to shift and change. Slowly at first… little reprieves in the glare before it would come back again, making her eyelids scrunch down tight. After an indeterminable amount of time spent drifting through endless white, Natasha found she could bear open her eyes again. The light was still blinding, but it was different. Warm and golden, but not the over-saturated gold of her strange non-life. It was bright and buttery, and warm on her face, scintillating and shifting across her vision in a seemingly random dance. After drawing a few calibrating breaths, she realized that she was lying down, curled on her side with what felt like a mattress beneath her. 

She sat bolt upright, swinging her legs off the edge of the bed beneath, and sucking in a startled gasp at the discovery. And it struck her that she could hear it. That she could _hear_ herself draw breath. It shocked her that she could hear _anything_ so clearly. The bed springs made a sound. The shuffle of her feet on the hardwood floor made a sound. She could even hear a bird singing outside the window… 

Outside… 

_Outside…_

She gave her bleary head a smart shake. She had spent so long in the strange muted void of whatever fly-in-amber prison the Soul Stone had confined her to that her ears rang with every little sound. Because now she was in a place that had sound. Real sound. Sharp and clear.

And there was light.

And there were… birds singing...

Outside the window of… a house...

She was in a house.

Natasha sucked in another slow, grounding breath, feeling it whistle in her lungs as she forced herself to keep looking around despite feeling increasingly overstimulated by the sudden change in her situation. She inhaled again, instructing herself to catalogue her surroundings in short, crisp thoughts. It was an old technique that had always helped keep panic at bay when she'd found herself in unexpected situations. 

Her training… she still had her training even if she had nothing else.

So. She was in a house. In the bedroom of an unfamiliar, unassuming house. Probably one story given the roofline she could see out the window. There was a tree outside the window too. A fully leafed out maple. That's why the light was changing. There was sunlight streaming in the windows through the bright green leaves. It painted a beautifully mottled pattern of light across the bedspread. She reached out to touch the quilt beneath her. It was handmade by the look of it. With another, similar but not matching, folded over the foot of the bed. 

The bed... She'd woken up in a large bed. King sized and piled with plenty of bedclothes and pillows. The furniture was in good condition… but old. The honey-colored wood was polished down with time and use. There were soft curtains on the windows, thrown open to let the sun spill through the room unhindered. 

This was _someone's_ house, but whoever they were, they hadn't been here long. The walls were empty of pictures or decorations. There were no personal items on the dresser or toiletries visible through the bathroom door. It was possible this was a second home… or getaway of some kind. A safe-house perhaps? But she didn't recognize it. Nothing in the room looked familiar. 

Where was she…?

As she stood, she realized she was still in her tac suit, minus her boots which stood by the foot of the bed. On the bedside table was all her gear. Her Widow's Bite, and all her gadgets and gizmos from her toolbelt, save the grappling hook of course. That was probably still stuck to the cliff back on Vormir. She smoothed her hands down the front of the supple leather, took another deep and clamorous breath, and stepped out into the hallway.

The hallway walls were bare as well, and when she moved into the living room, she found it as equally sparse as the bedroom. But homey. The furniture looked comfortable and plush. But there was nothing terribly personalized about the space. No pictures. No bags or jackets. It almost seemed like a photo from a magazine brought to life. 

There was a large plate glass door which yielded a fuller view of the surrounds. It was early afternoon if she had to guess by the light, and summertime judging by how much bright green she could see. This house was in the middle of a field. Farmland possibly? Very rural nonetheless. The more she looked around, the more this place reminded her of Clint's farmhouse. But this was definitely not his house. There were no toys on the floor. No dishes in the sink in the adjoining kitchen. No dartboard on the wall.

It occurred to her that this could be Tony's house. Or another getaway of his. But she'd seen the cabin on the lake he shared with Pepper and Morgan, even just from the outside. It was unassuming, but the marks of his opulent tastes were understatedly everywhere. And they certainly were not here. 

No… this was something else.

"Hello?" she called out finally, her voice scratchy and thunderous in her own ears.

No answer.

Natasha took yet another steadying, diaphragm-stretching breath and called again, a little louder this time.

"Hello? Anybody there?"

Nothing.

So she resumed taking stock, recounting what she'd learned so far as she set her mind to the secondary task of figuring out what to do next. 

It would seem she was no longer in the Soul Stone. She was in a small house, presumably on Earth or someplace very much like it. A strange house with no pictures or personal effects that she could see. She didn't immediately recognize the outside terrain. And there was no one to respond to a call out. She had no idea how she'd gotten here, but she had all her gear, which she hadn't before in the... 

Her gear...

Instantly, she groped for the inner pocket of her tac suit, clever fingers instantly finding what they needed nestled between skin and a frayed scrap of old canvas.

Her burner phone. Steve's burner phone.

It looked like she was on Earth or something like it. It was worth a shot, assuming the thing still had a charge. 

She flipped it open. It did indeed have a charge. 

_Holy shit._

She dialed Steve's number and pressed it to her ear.

One ring. 

Two rings.

Her stomach tightened.

And the line connected with a click.

"Hello?"

"Steve?" Her voice cracked clean down the middle. "Oh my God, Steve is that you?"

"Natasha..." She could hear something in his tone. Something strange and twining, straining across whatever distance parted them at the sound of his name wrapped in her voice.

"Steve, I'm… I've woken up in a strange house. I don't know where I am." She said. As she spoke, she could feel panic starting to rise but she smartly wrenched herself in line and kept talking as calmly and evenly as she could manage. She'd found Steve. He could help her. She just needed to focus and find out where she was. "Are you where you can get a lock on this signal? Let me know where I am?"

"Yeah." Steve said, and for the most fleeting of seconds she could have sworn he was trying not to laugh. "Yeah, hang on just a sec, Nat."

"Okay… okay, thank you. I'll stand by." She replied, turning slowly in place with the phone pressed to her ear. She could hear him breathing and talking to someone, and that was followed the staticky sound of footsteps. He was on the move, presumably to a commsat station or the GPS console on a Quinjet. So she stayed put, taking in more of her surroundings and going over the information she'd gleaned again. It might help Steve find her if she can give details.

So again. She was in a house, now almost certainly on Earth. She'd gotten in touch with Steve, so he was going to start looking for her. This place was comfortable, but not lived in. Probably not Tony's house. Not Clint's either, though it reminded her of his-

There was the raking sound of the plate glass door sliding open behind her. She startled and whirled in place, phone still in hand…

And there was Steve, his own phone still pressed to his ear. And a second later, a wide-eyed Bucky appeared at his elbow. Both of them were just… there. Framed in the doorway, haloed in the summer sunlight like saints of old.

"Steve?" she gasped, the name barely more than a shocked escape of breath as she lowered the phone from her ear. "Bucky?"

"Hey, Nat." Steve said, his voice fracturing against her name. And he smiled. He smiled like dawn breaking. Slowly… barely... and then all at once. "Welcome home."

She dropped the phone on the sofa and ran towards them, jumping and diving for Steve with all four limbs spread. He caught her easy as anything, letting her wrap him up in legs and arms and pivoting so Bucky could press himself along her back.

"Oh my God… oh my God…" she kept whispering over and over into the collar of his t-shirt.

The two men were murmering a soothing jumble of words as they held onto her, clutching her between them like a life preserver.

"It's okay." They were saying.

"You're home." 

"You're back."

"It's alright."

"You're alright."

"Nat…"

"Natasha…"

Steve set her down and she tearfully kissed them both. "For a minute there, I thought I'd died and gone to heaven." she said laughing and sniffling and pressing more kisses to their faces between the words.

"Nah." Bucky said, wiping at his eyes and smoothing his hair back out of his face. "Can't be heaven. Clint lives next door."

She laughed at that, a joyful, bewildered, and tear-soaked sound. "Where the fuck are we?"

"Iowa. The farm due east of Clint's." Steve answered, pulling her snugly against his hip. "It was for sale and… Pepper kind of… took care of this for us."

She looked to Bucky with wide, mirthful eyes. "You… you weren't kidding." She said, her hands coming to rest on his shoulders, both nearly bare in his tank top. She could feel the jointed metal under her hand and for the first time ever, it truly felt like a comfort. The soft vibration of the inner workings… the easy slide of the plates… 

Oh God, he was _alive!_

"Nope." He said listing against both of them, and sandwiching her against Steve's chest. "It's… ours. This is ours. Home sweet home." And together, in the bright mid-morning sun, they swayed and sighed with beautifully mingling relief.

She looked around completely mystified at the thought. "Ours…" she echoed. "Home…"

"Home." Steve repeated as well.

"How long has it been?" She asked her brows knitting faintly, though her smile never wavered. "How long was I…"

"A few weeks." Bucky replied, mouth tightening at the mere thought of her actually saying the words. "You've been unconscious here for a couple of days. Bruce checked you over back at the Tower and said that you'd wake up when you were good and ready. It was like… on the scans it just looked like you were sleeping. So we brought you here."

Natasha gave a little bewildered nod of her head. It was strange to think about… days and weeks… she'd been without those things for so long… was it so long?

"How long for you?" Steve inquired, almost as if he were reading her mind as he hooked an errant lock of her hair behind her ear.

She just shook her head, eyes going a little distant. "Too long. It's… I honestly have no idea. A few weeks feels about right, but… it feels shorter. And longer… where I was, time didn't move. And neither did I really."

Bucky rested his chin in the dip of her shoulder, nose against her ear. "Where did you go?" he asked, his scruff tickling her neck.

Her brow pinched in thought. "I… don't really know. I was in this… place. Surrounded by water. It was like our compound up in New York, but it… there wasn't anything inside and nobody there. Except… I saw… I saw Bruce and Tony when they used the Stones."

"So they said. Or… well… Bruce did." Bucky said, voice trailing a little.

"Yeah, I… I got to talk to them. That's… I know we won. I know that Bruce snapped his fingers and got everybody back. And I know Thanos came back… somehow? Time travel too, I guess."

"Yeah." Steve affirmed. "He captured Nebula and got her Pym particles. Used them to bring his whole army to our doorstep."

"But we won?" she asked, staring up at both of them. "After Tony snapped his fingers?"

"Yeah… yeah, I guess we did." Steve said pulling them both into the tight circle of his arms. 

"He didn't make it, did he?" Natasha asked with her nose pressed to Steve's breastbone, though it was more a statement than a question. She knew the answer. She'd seen him in her amber prison and Tony's certainty had been enough. And even if it hadn't… she could tell it in their tone. In their faces when she'd said his name.

"There's… a lot to catch you up on." Steve said, speaking the words against the part of her hair.

And that was really all the answer she needed. And all the discussion about it she wanted for now. She raised up on tiptoe and kissed the twist of sadness from Steve's lips. And then she kissed Bucky too, licking gently past his teeth and feeling him open up like a flower to the intrusion. "Later." she said. "I want a shower. And a change of clothes. And I want both of you back in that giant bed I woke up in. And it does not have to be in that order."

Neither Steve or Bucky needed much convincing beyond that. They untangled themselves just enough for her to lead them both by the hand back to the bedroom where she'd first woken up.

"Get me out of this. I've been in it too long." she declared once they hit the foot of the bed. Of _their_ bed. Their giant bed with so many pillows… 

She held her arms out from her sides and Bucky had the zipper undone before she finished speaking, and Steve was instantly working on her belt. She was nude in a flash, and as a reward for the diligent and quick service, she pulled them both into that giant bed with her.

She fell across the mattress bracketed between them, facing Bucky with Steve curled up against her back. She crowded them close to her, feeling the hard lines of their bodies buried in the soft folds of their clothes. She'd had enough of space and distance and quiet. Enough to fill ten thousand timeless lifetimes in that prison. She wanted them close... to feel them. Hear their heartbeats and their breathing... 

"I missed you." She said, burying her face against Bucky's chest and rubbing her cheek against the seam of scar tissue that joined his metal shoulder to his body. 

"We missed you," he responded, settling her halfway under him and reaching across to pull Steve even closer. 

"Yeah?" She leaned up and bumped his nose with hers. "Dumping ashes on your head and weeping?"

"Pepper was going to build you a memorial in the lobby of Avengers Tower." Steve said, nibbling at the back of her neck.

She snorted disbelievingly. "No way."

"Right hand to God." Steve replied. "Dunno what we're going to do with it now."

Natasha gave a throaty laugh. "You should put it out in our backyard and let me be insufferable about it." she suggested.

"How about no." Bucky said, drawing her in for a quick kiss. "You're insufferable enough already."

"I saved the universe, James Buchanan Barnes." she said, popping him across the arm. "I literally gave my life to bring back trillions of people!"

"See? Told you?" Bucky was saying to Steve over the top of her head, and he gave a throaty laugh. "Absolutely insufferable."

"You love it." She shot back, catching his bottom lip between her teeth and reeling him in for a proper kiss. One full of tongue and teeth all wrapped up in a gentle, surprised moan.

"I love _you._ " Bucky corrected, that sweetly cocky smile on his face. 

Natasha felt Steve sit up a little behind her before she could respond. "Have we all said it now?"

They both nodded, color tinging their cheeks.

"Well, it's about time." he said, smiling bright as the sun outside before reeling her in for a kiss of his own.

Bucky's mouth was too busy to reply. He worked his lips along her collarbones until he could bury his face in the soft pillow of her cleavage. But the kisses were eloquent enough… lingering and wet and edged in teeth as if he could consume her this way. Possess her and never give her up again. He had both arms wrapped around the two of them so tight, the metal one would bruise were it gripping anyone but Steve.

Natasha was nearly lost to it. Lost to the searing touch of their mouths and their hands and the slow grind of their bodies against the lean line of hers. She felt as if she might disappear entirely between them. And that… that would honestly be okay at this point. She had disappeared from the world once already. What a wonderful reversal of fortune… that she was back! They had won, and she was ba-

_Wait._

She half sat up between them, turning to look back over her shoulder at Steve with a tight, nearly shocked little frown.

"How did you do it?" Her tone was gentle but it was still barely a question and more an accusation.

"Do what?" Steve replied.

"If I'm not hallucinating, and I'm not… this isn't… How did you get me back?" She answered, eyes flicking between the two men with no small amount of distrust clouding her brow. "I… I actually specifically told Bruce to tell… well, to tell Clint because I figured he'd have the fewest brain cells about the whole thing. I told him to tell you guys not to bring me back. To not undo it. So if I'm not dreaming, and I'm not hallucinating, and I'm not actually dead and in heaven… how did you do it without undoing everything?"

Steve swallowed, a shadow falling across his eyes despite the sunlight pouring through the room. Something in Natasha's gut clenched at the sight but she made herself stay silent and wait for him to tell her in his own time. 

"I changed the bargain." he said finally. "Gave the Stone something else in your place when we returned it."

"Changed the bargain." she echoed, rolling over to face him, pulling Bucky's metal arm over her like a blanket as she went. "Some _thing_ else?"

Steve just nodded. "It can't be undone. That's what Clint said. And Bruce delivered your message saying the exact same thing. That it couldn't be undone and we shouldn't try. But I thought… if there's no _undoing_ it, then maybe… maybe the deal can be changed. It was your life for the Stone. Maybe… maybe I could give it something else. Not… not _someone's_ life. But… a life. Something that I loved..."

She shook her head, dread slipping down her spine like an ice cube. She remembered the Stone's words… spoken in Loki's voice. 

_Is this love that has someone knocking on the door of oblivion with trinkets in hand hoping to quite literally buy you back from me?_

But it still didn't make any sense. What had he done? "I don't understand." she said, her voice wrung and distressed. "What… what did you do?"

Steve licked his lips giving a faint shake of his head. "I'm… I'm not really sure I understood what I was doing. But the Stone did."

_Is this love, Agent Romanoff?_

"Steve." she said, cupping his cheek and drawing his sad blue eyes up to meet hers and letting the mottled sunlight chase the shadows off his face. "What did you trade to get me back?"

"I took… I took the last vial of Pym particles." he said, forcing himself to meet her eyes. "He's not making anymore. It's too dangerous. But I took the last of it to Vormir and I threw what I didn't need to get back over the edge."

Natasha's brows drew up with perplexion at that. "I don't get it. Why would that stuff be considered equal to a life?"

"I'm… I'm not proud it worked." Steve said, trying to hide his face against the palm of her hand. "It worked because… I was a coward."

"Steve." Natasha said, half in admonishment and half begging him to just say it already. She still had no idea what he was going on about. How did the chemical solution that made time travel possible equate to the life of one's beloved?

"It worked because he could have used it to go back in time to be with Peggy." Bucky's voice drifted up from behind her, words tangling in her hair. "Have the life he was supposed to have back in the 40's. The… the life he gave up was his own. His chance at his old life."

Her eyes grew wide for a second before her whole expression clamped down in a tight frown. "What?"

Steve wasn't looking at her. He just fidgeted with a loose thread on the quilt and drew a shaky breath while he searched for where to begin. And when he finally did speak, the explanation spilled out in fits and starts, like gouts of blood from a still seeping wound. "I… after everything. When I thought… I thought I couldn't get you back. And Tony was gone, and you were gone, and just… I thought about going back." He looked up at both of them, guilt brimming in his eyes. "Y'know? If we could travel through time… maybe I could go and have the life I was always supposed to have. You and Tony were always telling me to go get a life, Nat. And… you lost yours. Both of you." 

He paused to shake his head. "I wondered if I could be happy. If I could… fix things, y'know? The things I've been carrying with me since I came out of the ice… things that have kept me from being happy in the here and now. I could… go back and actually save Bucky from HYDRA. Keep the HYDRA scientists from Project Paperclip from corrupting SHIELD. Be… be who I was supposed to be. Be with Peggy. Find out… find out who I was supposed to be. I think… I never stopped loving that idea." He stopped, his voice turning thick as tears started to brim in his bright blue eyes. "But I knew I would just be carrying all my issues with me. There… wasn't any going back. And even if there was… what about Bucky?" He cast a guilty glance up at Bucky, who raised Steve's palm to his lips for a furtive kiss. "And then I thought… if I loved the idea that much. If I loved that life enough to… to even think about leaving Bucky behind... Then maybe…"

"So you dropped it over the edge." Natasha said finishing the story for herself, the edges of the words gone feathery and soft with wonder. "For me. You gave up a life with Peggy for me."

"So _we_ could have you back." Steve corrected, hand tightening where it lay on her ribs. "So we could have the lives we are supposed to have."

"You… you could have gone back." she said softly, remembering all the times she'd caught him gazing at that compass with her picture. "You could have had the life you always wanted."

"But I think that's just it. I _have_ the life I wanted." Steve said. "That's… that's what I realized when I was standing at that cliff on Vormir. I… I finally have the life I want. Right here. Right now. I should've learned that when we were all together in Wakanda. It… wasn't a perfect life, but it was…"

"Good." Natasha finished for him.

"Yeah…" He said, giving her the saddest smile she'd ever seen. "But I didn't learn it then. I learned it… really saw it and understood it when I lost you. And when I had a way to buy you back… to have all three of us back together again? I had to try."

Tears welled up thick and hot in Natasha's eyes. "Oh Steve…" she whispered, leaning forward to press her trembling lips against his. It was the messiest of kisses… mingled tears and sniffles in the hot and desperate press of their mouths. And Natasha could feel Bucky's gentle sobs against her back, his tears dampening her hair where he kept kissing her neck.

"I love you… both of you." She said, the words coming out brittle but sincere.

"Love you too…" Bucky managed between presses of his mouth to the nape of her neck. But Steve just kissed her again. It was more eloquent than words. Words couldn't convey the deep complication of the guilt at his own cowardice, because that cowardice had been what allowed them to exchange a vial of molecules for Natasha's life. It was a blessing in a way and he couldn't be sorry for it. It was an exhilarating and harrowing thing to contemplate, and there was no dressing it in words. Not yet. Not with everything so raw.

So kisses it would be. At least for now.

They'd started moving again somewhere in the midst of all the tears and kisses. It had begun as a sort of burrowing… down into the pillows and tighter against each other. But the twisting and the tightening gradually transformed into a slow, rutting dance with all three of them writhing and wriggling as if they could somehow meld their bodies together entirely. So that they'd never separate. So that they would never be alone ever again.

"If you both don't take your clothes off right now-" Natasha started, but she'd barely gotten half the threat out before they were both tugging at their shirts. Steve was completely nude first, and as a reward, the perfectly rigid arch of his cock was instantly in her hand. He gasped at the contact, his hips jumping towards her lazy grip as Bucky, also nude now, slotted up behind her, grinding his length against the small of her back.

She tucked her legs in and rolled to her knees between them, stroking a hand up each of their cocks and watching them suck in ragged gasps in tandem. She savored the sound, and just that much stimulation made her shiver. It all felt like so much after her long, unchanging imprisonment in the unbearably quiet world the Soul Stone had built her. Everything was just… so much. Light and sound. Smell and touch. It overwhelmed her. And yet she wanted more. She wanted their skin on hers. Their mouths on hers. She wanted to watch every flicker of emotion and ecstasy cross their faces. Wanted to hear their moans growing gradually more desperate.

It wasn't long before they were both rock hard in her hands, their cocks glistening with wetness at the tips. And for awhile they both seemed too pleasure shocked to do anything. But eventually a desire to be close won over the desire for more carnal pleasures. The desire for what they'd been denied for far too long.

"You should let us take care of you, Nat." Steve panted, though he made no effort to move out of her grip. If anything, he rutted even more feverishly against her palm, a handsome flush already working its way across his chest.

"Your chivalry is real convincing there, punk." Bucky said, the snideness of his tone betrayed somewhat by the way his chest was heaving. He had his metal fist knotted into his pillow and Natasha wouldn't have been surprised if he tore it to shreds before they were done. It wouldn't be the first time.

"Your shining armor's looking a little tarnished there as well, котенок." Natasha teased, giving her wrists a little twist on the next upstroke which had both men arching up off the bed.

Steve flopped back down on the mattress with a thready moan, but Bucky let the momentum carry him up into a sitting position. He flung both arms around Natasha, twisting her until her back was pressed against his heaving chest. He pinned her there with his metal arm, despite some good natured thrashing on her part, and smoothed the other down between her legs until she went pliant against him.

"There we go. That's a little better." Bucky crooned roughly but sweetly in her ear. "Steve, want to help me with her? She's got a sharp tongue on her. Makes me think she might appreciate a tongue in a few other places."

Natasha didn't have the pride to be ashamed at how wantonly her knees fell open at that. Steve crawled up between her legs, pulling one thigh over his shoulder before pressing his mouth to the flushed, pouty slit of her pussy. Natasha bowed back against Bucky and he held her fast against him, turning her head to steal a messy kiss from her lips.

"Ah fuck…" she moaned, twisting in Bucky's grip mostly just to feel the metal of his arm bite into her skin. To feel how he didn't give an inch. To feel how he just held her there for Steve to plunder and pleasure at his leisure.

And it was at his leisure. Steve was clearly going to take his time. He could make Natasha come so quickly and so easily as he'd proven on a number of occasions. Just the right bend of his fingers… the right twist of his wrist and wriggle of his tongue and she would fall apart in his hands. But no… not this time. He was taking his good sweet time. Long, lazy licks from the bottom of her pussy to the top as if he were savoring ice cream rather than eating her out. And each with each lick, he pushed his tongue deeper into the cleft of her body. Just a little deeper… just a little deeper. He was quite literally licking her open.

"Fuck Steve…" she hissed through clenched teeth, her hips stuttering against the press of his mouth.

"He being a tease?" Bucky asked in a syrup sweet voice. 

"Mmhmm…" was the best Natasha could do in the words department. She was caught in their merciless grip where all she could do was fruitlessly writhe. 

"It's been so long, Nat. We want to take our time." Bucky told her.

Something in her warmed and preened at the treatment. She felt… missed. Sure they were teasing. And sure they were sweet talking. But there was something… savoring in all of it. Something with a deeper purpose.

"Fuck…" The curse was all she could manage as Steve set to work sucking on her clit.

"That what you want, doll?" Bucky asked. "He giving it to you how you like?"

"I want both of you." she whined.

"You've got us, sweetheart." Bucky said, turning her head to kiss her again as Steve moaned in agreement between her legs.

"I know," She said between presses of Bucky's mouth over hers. "But I want you both. At the same time."

Both men stilled around her, and Steve looked up at her from between her thighs with wide, incredulous eyes. He licked her slickness from his lips as he searched for words, mind clearly gone numb and his pupils blown black with lust.

"Both of us?" Bucky said, drawing her eyes to meet his. 

She nodded, catching her bottom lip between her teeth before she leaned up to kiss him again. So many kisses. She couldn't get enough. There would never be enough.

Bucky smiled against her mouth, a little predatory and a lot lust-drunk at the notion of fucking her _with_ Steve. He almost needed to press a hand to his cock at the idea, lest he shoot off like a bottle rocket. "You heard her, Steve," He said as he kissed a trail along the line of Natasha's pale throat. "She wants us both. So you'd better get her nice and wet for us."

Steve just smiled, the glint in his dark eyes gone filthy and suddenly fixated. He dove between her legs again, spearing the point of his tongue into her pussy and sending her arching over Bucky like a drawn bow. Bucky pooled her against him, both hands on her breasts teasing her nipples until she chased his touch. And she chased Steve's tongue too. Her body chased after their hands and their mouths with a mind of its own until she was nothing more than a conduit for the overwhelming sensations arcing through her body.

How long they strung her along, she couldn't say. She lost track of time and in the most wonderful way. All she knew was there was a steady heat building low in her body. Molten and slow moving… building and building. Growing and growing. Until finally the pressure overflowed and zipped out through every inch of her body like a wind-fueled wildfire. Natasha's body went slack in Bucky's arms as Steve continued to lap lazily at her pussy, as if he could drink up the pleasure spinning out under her skin. It felt wonderful, but every pass of his tongue had her twitching and writhing weakly. But she couldn't move. She could only draw in thick, heavy pulls of air and moan into Bucky's shoulder. 

"You're going to kill the poor girl, Steve." Bucky said, still idly playing with one of Natasha's nipples as if that weren't driving her just as crazy.

"She tastes so good, Buck." Steve said, the words coming out as humid little puffs of air on her already overstimulated skin. 

"I know she does." Bucky said, tipping her chin so that he could steal a languorous kiss from her parted lips. "Come on. Roll over so we don't keep her waiting."

Steve flopped over onto his back, dragging Natasha's hips with him so she spilled across his body. She buried her face against his chest, kissing and biting at the flush that had blossomed there as she dragged her dripping pussy over the hard line of his cock. He responded instantly, hips curling to meet hers.

A slight cant of her pelvis and the head of Steve's cock slipped inside. It was so easy. It had always been that easy. He was big, and she was tight, but it was always just that easy. He glided in like she was made of satin. Sweet, wet satin that gripped up around his girth so tight. 

Would they both fit? Could she really make that happen? Would she _let_ them do that? Steve suddenly wanted it so badly it scared him. He wanted to rut up into the forge-hot clutch of her body alongside Bucky and just _take_...

"That's it." Bucky encouraged, rolling to his side to watch their bodies slowly fit themselves together. "Fuck yourself open on him for me, Natasha. Fuck yourself nice and open and we'll give you what you asked for."

She moaned and obeyed, rocking back and seating herself completely on the fat length of Steve's cock. He could be a challenge to take at certain angles, but never a hardship. Just a few swiveling rocks and the pressure would turn sweet and infuriating instead of bordering on overwhelming or uncomfortable.

She was aware that Bucky was moving behind her. He was straddling Steve's thighs, hands on her hips to guide her rhythm. Or perhaps just to feel it. To feel how her muscles bunched and worked as she fucked herself on Steve's cock.

"Come on, Steve." Bucky encouraged, petting his metal hand down her thigh. "Fuck her open for me so we can both have her. Just like she wants. You still want that, yeah?"

Natasha nodded, trying in vain to wet her mouth enough for speech. But a sibilant "Yesss…" was all she could manage.

"That's it. You wanna get yourself off one more time before we try this?" Bucky asked, lips pressed to the shell of her ear.

Natasha did her best to think about the question through the haze of pleasure that was filling her head with a pleasant sort of cottony static. Then she shook her head slowly. "How do you want to do this?" Her voice sounded thick and almost drunk in her own ears.

"I gotcha, sweetheart." He said. "Raise up for me." Bucky wrapped his metal arm around her ribs and helped lift her until he could slide his hips under hers so that she was half sitting in his lap with his knees curled beneath her thighs. Natasha seemed to follow his train of thought and reached down between her legs to take both their cocks in hand. Once she had them positioned against her entrance she leaned back over her shoulder and nodded to Bucky. And he ever so slowly started to lower her down.

It was a lot of sensation all at once. And a lot of different sensations to boot. Full. Tight. Warm. And right at the end, a twinge of pressurized pain. But she couldn't focus on anything for long. The sensations were like frenetic noise in her brain. But then the whole afternoon had been that way for Natasha. Like being hit by wave after unexpected wave of sensation and repeatedly subsumed beneath the frothing surface. At this point it was all fuzz and white noise. She could hear her partners moaning under her and behind her as they split her open with aching slowness and care. And she drank it in. She was just a container for sensation stretched to bursting, yet it was never enough. Her only purpose was to feel and experience and she had no breaking point. She could contain it every spark… every gasp... and surf atop it and drown in it all at once. 

Eventually she bottomed out and came to rest flush against both their pelvises. Her breath came fast and labored though she was hardly doing anything. It was just so much. But Bucky had her, metal arm cradling her ribs and his other hand petting her throat… her face… teasing one breast ever so gently. Just another circuit of sensation connected to the livewire that was the weight and girth of both of them inside her.

"You alright?" Bucky asked, the words tangled in her sweat-dampened hair.

She could only nod. She couldn't keep enough air in her body for actual words. It was like the thickness of them forced all the breath from her lungs. And they weren't even moving yet.

Bucky set his chin in the crook of her shoulder to look down at Steve. He was as gone as she was, with his eyes half lidded and glassy, and that perfect mouth parted in the most inviting way. He'd once told Steve that he had a mouth meant for sucking cock… and it was true. The only person Bucky knew who could occasionally out-do Steve in that department was the woman Bucky was currently balls deep inside.

"You good, Stevie?" Bucky asked, the corner of his mouth playing up just a little.

Steve's vision cleared a little, but the only answer he seemed capable of was a nod. His breath was gone too. And he was trembling with the effort of keeping still. Bucky could feel it through Natasha's near boneless frame.

"Let's move for her, okay? Before she gets impatient?"

Steve nodded again, shaking hands coming up to grip her thighs. Bucky followed the flex of his forearms which bore them up and down on his cock. Steve's lust-dark eyes closed again as a moan worked its way up his throat.

"I can feel you, Buck…" he said, the words coming out as just husks of breath.

Natasha had gone completely pliant between them, letting herself be drawn back over Bucky's shoulder as she allowed them to guide and direct her. She could feel another orgasm beginning to rise irrepressibly down in her core, but she didn't feel compelled to chase it. It felt like an inevitability. A natural force like an incoming tide or a storm front rolling in. She didn't need to do anything. The circumstance of the two men, gently thrusting into the warmth of her body would carry her to that eventual peak. She only needed to be carried.

It was so much. She felt full and tight… like her skin was too small. Her body was too small. And yet she felt infinite. Connected to Steve and to Bucky as they worked her between them, all of it like the most perfectly tuned piece of machinery.

How long they kept at it, none of them could tell. Time had seemed to stop. The slow drag of their bodies together was guided only by want and need and more more _more._ And then somewhere in the wonderful foggy haze, Natasha was aware that Bucky's fingers had found her clit and the whole world bleached white.

Like when they'd bought the Soul Stone. And then bought her back again. Released her from that amber prison. 

Maybe that was why it was sometimes called a release...

Sometimes, Natasha's orgasms felt like a sudden, concussive crack of lightning, or the snap of an electric current. More often, they felt like heat welling up inside her body. But this was different from all of that. Rather than coming from within, the warm pressure of her orgasm almost felt as if it were coming from without. Her skin felt as if it stretched to contain what was pouring through her body. Something in her thrilled with something like fear. Like she might dissolve or ignite with the heat and desire of it. And yet she wanted it. Wanted to be swept away and surrounded. Pulled beneath the surface of her slowly welling ecstasy to never be seen again.

She was floating. Floating away. Up, down… it didn't matter. She was weightless as she worked herself on their lengths. Or allowed herself to be worked… she wasn't really sure if she was the one moving. Bucky was probably doing most of the work, his metal arm eating bruises into her skin that she could savor later. Everything was slick and wonderful and she never wanted it to stop. She was just floating… at last... at first… for always...

Sometimes orgasms left her hazy and numb for a long while. The afterglow would stretch on and on, making her so lazy she might even forego a shower. But this was different. Sharp sensation came rushing back to her, tumbling her forward so that Steve had to catch her by the shoulders. They were both still going strong, catching a tandem rhythm inside her as they felt her body give way between them. 

And suddenly that was better than any orgasm she could ever have. She could touch them. She could hear their ragged breathing. She could _feel_ them as they were pistoning into her with increasing desperation. They were here. They were all real.

And they had _won._

Natasha tossed her head back onto Bucky's metal shoulder, moaning aloud as she worked herself down onto them.

"Oh God, I'm so close…" Steve groaned beneath her, fingers digging into her thighs. 

"Me too… me too…" came Bucky's harsh reply. "Oh fuck… Steve, I'm-"

And then just like that Natasha could feel them flex around her and within her as heat flooded up into her body. They both shook and groaned half-formed words of "yes" and "oh God" and something that might have been intended to be her name but felt more like a pronouncement of ecstatic pleasure that defied all attempts at language.

Somehow they managed to not crush each other as they collapsed like a house of cards in the wind down. Bucky pulled her to the side, and Steve curled up against her chest as they all started to catch their breath. Bucky pulled an errant tendril of hair back off Natasha's neck so that he could kiss her just behind her ear.

"You alright, Nat?" He asked, kissing the question into her skin.

"Never better." she said, pulling Steve closer so that he could more effectively bury his face between her breasts. "Gonna feel that tomorrow."

"Should we have been gentler?" He sat up a little to look at her with bleary, pleasure-soaked eyes.

She shook her head. "No, I… I want to feel it. I… missed feeling. I missed you. Both of you." 

"We missed you too." Steve said, the words humid on her sweat-sheened skin. But he kept kissing her, licking the salt from her body as she arched back to kiss Bucky and nose at his whiskered cheek. Then she drew Steve's face up to hers and kissed him as well, before Bucky leaned over for a messy, off-centered kiss of his own. A feast for the starving… all of them...

"I love you." she whispered, looking back and forth between them with shiny, pleasure-bright eyes. "I'm glad to be home."

"We love you too." Bucky said.

"And we're all glad to be home, I think." Steve finished, settling down into the pillows.

"I'm still wondering if I've died and gone to heaven." Natasha said, a smile curling her kiss-swollen mouth as she laid her cheek on Steve's still-heaving chest.

"You can'tve, doll." Bucky said, the words getting lost in the damp curls of her hair "What kind of heaven would let me in?"

She pulled his metal arm tighter around her as she pressed her face into Steve's breastbone. "The only one I ever want to go to."

***

_The stars in their courses will run_   
_and bring their hearts earthward to hear her._   
_The boughs of the fruit trees bend nearer_   
_to the girl in the garden..._

_The girl in the garden…_   
_And I…_

***


	7. Make Our Garden Grow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Despite their disparate and in some ways downright antithetical lives up to that point, the trio took to life on their little farm as if they had all been born to it. A month's worth of days had wicked away into all sorts of mundanities and they had hardly seemed to notice. Where it had been missions and world issues and equipment requisitions, now it was dishes, and laundry, and yard work. The gutters had needed cleaning before the autumn storm season, and the kitchen faucet had started leaking after about a week. There was a shed that needed clearing out and garden beds that needed weeding. And Bucky kept staring at one corner of the field in a way that made it clear to Natasha and Steve that they could probably expect to be housing goats by this time next year. 
> 
> All simple problems and ambitions with simple solutions. 
> 
> Days were spent engaged in comfortable domesticity. They were outside when the weather was nice, especially for coffee in the morning. And evenings were lost to binging reality TV shows that served as little more than background noise to their quiet intimacy.
> 
> Except when they watched "The Great British Bake-off." No one was allowed to talk or distract Natasha while that was on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Greetings everyone! And Happy Monday!
> 
> Well here we are! The end of the line for my Endgame fix-it fic. Not much to say so I'm going to hop to it.
> 
> The chapter title is taken from the song "Make Our Garden Grow" from the opera "Candide" by Leonard Bernstein.
> 
> I want to thank you all from the bottom of my heart for all your kind words, encouragement, and enthusiasm for this fic. I'll be honest. I was very nervous about it. But thank you all for sticking with me.
> 
> Many thanks to my beta readers KaminaDuck and musicnerd88.
> 
> Onward! To the final chapter.

***

_Let dreamers dream_  
_What worlds they please._  
_Those Edens can't be found._  
_The sweetest flowers,_  
_The fairest trees_  
_Are grown in solid ground._

***

Despite their disparate and in some ways downright antithetical lives up to that point, the trio took to life on their little farm as if they had all been born to it. After they had all returned from Vormir, month's worth of days had wicked away into all sorts of mundanities and they had hardly seemed to notice. Or even be truly bothered by their sudden change of scenery and scope. Where it had been missions and world issues and equipment requisitions, now it was dishes, and laundry, and yard work. The gutters had needed cleaning before the autumn storm season, and the kitchen faucet had started leaking after about a week. There was a shed that needed clearing out and garden beds that needed weeding. And Bucky kept staring at one corner of the field in a way that made it clear to Natasha and Steve that they could probably expect to be housing goats by this time next year. 

All simple problems and ambitions with simple solutions. 

Days were spent engaged in comfortable domesticity. Chores shared and meals taken together. They were outside when the weather was nice, especially for coffee in the morning. And evenings were lost to binging reality TV shows that served as little more than background noise to their quiet intimacy.

Except when they watched "The Great British Bake-off." No one was allowed to talk or distract Natasha while that was on.

Natasha in particular was outside whenever she could be, laid out on their massive porch swing basking like a lizard in the sun. She wisely slathered herself in sunscreen so she could slowly bake herself bronze in the brilliant late afternoon sun any time she could spare. 

She'd fallen asleep out there one particularly breezy afternoon. The weight and warmth of the sun's rays kept her still for a long while as the wind gently rocked her. And when she awoke, it was to the faint scratching of a pencil on paper. She cracked one eye and peeled her sunglasses off her face, finding Steve in his favorite spot on their patio sofa, merrily sketching away on a sketchpad. His brow was furrowed in concentration until he saw her peering at him. Then he smirked.

"Sorry. Couldn't resist." he said, barely pausing his work.

"It's alright. I don't mind." She said giving a little stretch and a vain tug on the hem of her sundress before falling back into a dozy approximation of her original position.

"Hey guys, dinner's probably going to be another hour." Bucky had just poked his head out the sliding glass door. "Having art class?"

"Natasha's a lovely if slightly unwitting model." Steve said. "Might've been drawing her while she was napping."

Natasha gave an indulgently sleepy little laugh. "Draw me like one of your French girls, Steve." she said dramatically, rolling her hips and shoulders to strike an overwrought pose before sitting up a little with her head cocked. "Wait, have you seen-"

"No, I've seen that one," Steve said pointing at her with his pencil and grinning with obvious pleasure and excitement. "I've seen that one! I get that reference!"

"But when the hell did you watch _Titanic_?" Natasha asked, cocking her head. "Because I know I never made you sit through it."

"More importantly, _why_ the hell did you watch Titanic?" Bucky cut in, leaning his shoulder on the doorframe.

"Um… Sharon and I watched it, actually." Steve said, drawing the sketchpad up as a shield from the scrutinizing gazes of his partners. "Back before I moved to Manhattan."

"Oh yeah?" Natasha said, salaciously drawing out the words.

"You ever get more than a kiss out of her?" Bucky asked. "I can't believe I never thought to ask."

Steve's face flushed bright red all the way up to his hairline. "No. And I never planned on it." He rebutted.

"Whatever. You were into her." Bucky shot back.

"He really was." Natasha agreed.

"Guys. Come on. She was Peggy's niece, you perverts." Steve said, indignantly dropping the pad to his knee. "It would have been weird."

"Well, she got her looks from her aunt. That's all I'm sayin'." Bucky opined with a rather ribald grin as he swaggered out onto the porch. The sunlight caught in the plates of his arm making it gleam like armor.

"Sounds like _you're_ the one that really wants to… What is it you old farts say?" Natasha said waggling her eyebrows. "Make time with her?"

"Natasha, I swear to God…" Rather than finish the threat, Bucky simply followed through on it. He plopped down on the lounge swing and threw his metal arm around her waist, dragging her to him so he could tickle her.

"Oh shit! Oh fuck! FUCK!" She shrieked trying in vain to get away. It was no use, she knew. That metal arm wasn't going to let her go anywhere. It was now hooked around her ribs and over one shoulder, reeling her in fast.

"Careful! Yell too loud and we're going to have to explain to Clint how your little namesake learned a new word." Steve teased, taking up pad and pencil again to quickly catch the nuances of their sunlit smiles.

She her laugh turned into a growl of playful frustration and she craned her neck down and set her teeth into one of the metal plates on Bucky's arm.

"Hey! I can feel that, y'know."

"Oh, I'm well aware." She shot back, arching back against him. "Would you rather I did it somewhere a little more… pleasant?" She nosed along the line of his throat until she could catch his earlobe between her teeth.

Bucky practically melted himself along her back at that. "Does that mean you'd rather have those fingers someplace else?" He fired back, flattening his metal palm against her pubic bone. He could feel the heat of her body seeping through the thin cotton of her skirt.

Natasha made a hot little noise of intrigue down low in her throat and wiggled her ass back against Bucky, turning and questing for more places to nibble and nip.

"You two degenerates are ruining my sketch session." Steve teased, tapping his pencil on his pad.

"Ruining huh?" Bucky said, tossing his head to free himself from Natasha's mischievous teeth. "You hear that, Natasha? He says we're degenerate and that we're ruining his sketching."

"Whatever shall I do. I'll never forgive myself." Natasha replied in the flattest tone she could muster.

"You're both impossible." Steve said, though his irritation was only a thin veneer over his obvious amusement. And amorousness. His pupils had grown fat and dark watching them.

"Fine, Rogers. I'll give you something to sketch." Bucky tightened his grip on Natasha and rolled them until she was on her stomach and he was on his knees behind her. Bucky tugged her up onto all fours, petting the small of her back until it bent in the most sumptuous arch. He pushed the skirt of her pretty floral sundress up over her hips, kneading his fingers into the soft flesh of her ass before he stripped her panties down her thighs.

"Hard to sketch something in motion." Steve said, his voice drawing a little thin at the sudden shift in scenery.

"I've seen you draw birds in flight, Rogers. You're fooling no one." Bucky chastened as he draped himself down over Natasha's back. "Wanna help me put on a show?" He asked her, petting his fingers down her inner thighs.

She shuddered under him, wiggling her hips against the contact and nodded. "Of course."

Bucky rocked back on his heels, giving a tilt of his head as if he were considering something as he observed Natasha's body. Then he cut his eyes over to Steve, a clever light shining there in his lust-swollen pupils. "Hey Steve. Watch this." he said with a rakish grin as he kneaded her ass with both hands. His thumbs skirted dangerously inward to rub between her thighs, not quite touching anything overly sensitive but it was more than enough to tease her. Then he leaned up to whisper rather theatrically in her ear.

"Right or left, Natasha." he said, the words blowing scarlet tendrils of her hair loose from her braid. The choice was given as a statement. No… not just a statement. An instruction. 

_Choose._

"Oh fuck." Steve said, dropping his pencil and his hand going to the front of his shorts, as if he had a prayer of stemming the downward rush of his arousal.

Natasha just moaned, pushing back and wriggling her hips in his grip forcing him to tighten his fingers to keep her from managing to get what she wanted before he was ready to give it. He popped her lightly across the hip with his right hand before resuming his infuriating teasing. "Right or left, doll."

Whether she was playing up the suspense or actually having trouble trying to think through her shock and arousal, Steve neither knew nor cared. But she made a pretty show of thinking regardless, biting her lip and pinching her brows together.

"Left." she said finally.

Bucky hummed in consideration, one eyebrow lifting. "Left, huh? You want my left hand inside you?"

She nodded, biting her lower lip until it turned white as her cheeks flushed bright pink.

Bucky's smile grew menacing, mischievous teeth as he dragged his right hand through his hair. His left petted down the ditch of her spine, which she chased eagerly. "You want to come on my left hand? You trust me to put all this jointed metal inside you and make you come on it?"

She nodded again, bigger and more insistent this time as she thrust her hips back in an insistent invitation.

It was an inviting display, with her ass bare and her hands digging into the cushions, but Bucky wasn't biting yet. He swiped his left thumb over the pout of her pussy making her moan at the sensation of the cool metal on her hot flesh, but not sinking in just yet. And not touching her clit. Just rocking the digit back and forth across her opening, just enough to keep teasing her and spread that seeping slickness over the pad of his thumb. "You want to squeeze up around my metal hand and come your brains out? Is that it?"

"Bucky…" she whined softly. 

"Because you know what else I can do with it. Don't you? Intimately. And I'm choosing to pleasure you? You want that? You wanna get yourself off on that?"

"Bucky, please." she ground the plea out between gritted teeth as she chased his touch.

He laughed, a low, sweet sound in his throat as he swept his thumb over her pussy again, letting just the tip slide into the liquid heat of her body. The sound she made was exquisite. A thin, reedy moan that she buried in the cushions as he ever so slowly he split her open, his metal fingers paring apart the lips of her pussy with long, ever-deepening strokes which she chased with shallow rolls of her hips.

"You got a good view, Steve?" Bucky said smirking at him.

It was superfluous question. Steve could clearly see just fine. In fact, he'd set aside his sketchpad and had one hand resting on an attractively growing bulge in his shorts. But he nodded anyway, his lips parted slightly.

"You're being a fucking tease, Barnes." Natasha growled, her nails digging into the pillows.

"Oooh. 'Barnes' is it? I'm really in trouble." Bucky ragged, though he shifted his angle to let the tips of his metal fingers sink even deeper into the forge-hot clutch of her pussy. He hadn't been fibbing. He really could feel her with his metal hand. It was different from the other one of course, even with all the Wakandan advancements. The sensation was less than in his real hand, but somehow more for the difference. The slick and the heat and the pressure… it was all there, and the distinct impressions of each made it that much more heady. And made his pants grow tighter around his own growing erection.

"Ready for more?" Bucky asked, hiding the rough edge of his voice with a libertine smile.

"Fuck yes." she spit in frustration.

Bucky speared two metal fingers into her, twisting and crooking them to drag over the sensitive place just inside her entrance with a breathtaking sort of precision. She bowed back and let loose the prettiest, neediest moan Steve had ever heard. Bucky's tongue slipped out to work across his bottom lip as he listened, but he kept a grip on his voice.

"That's it, doll." he praised sweetly. "That what you like?"

She nodded, biting her lip again so hard Steve was shocked she didn't draw blood.

He rotated his wrist and thrust his fingers into her again. "Alright… you wanted my metal hand. You've got it. Now get yourself off with it."

Her eyes fluttered as she registered the instruction. "You're being lazy." she said between gritted teeth.

"I do recall that last night you laid in bed and just let Steve and I take turns eating you out and then he and I sucked each other off because you were too orgasm-useless to do anything." Bucky shot back. "Work for it, Romanoff. Show Steve how good you look. This is for him after all."

She didn't argue further. She arched her back to angle her pussy for the perfect thrust and started working herself on Bucky's prosthetic fingers. He didn't make her do all the work, of course. Not really. Who could resist touching Natasha Romanoff as she practically masturbated on command? He stroked her back and her ass, murmuring encouragement and keeping his metal digits perfectly curled so that they pressed exactly where she needed them to. He knew, even without being able to fully feel, precisely how to touch her. 

Bucky was amazing. He could strip a rifle in pitch black. Work a combination lock without audio equipment. And he could finger fuck her into oblivion without being able to completely feel what he was doing. How did she ever get so lucky?

Natasha snuck a look at Steve to find that he was now actively stroking himself through his shorts. A dark spot was beginning to show on the material where his trapped cock was leaking rather generously now. She unconsciously licked her lips as she redoubled her pace.

It was perfect. And filthy. And filthily perfect. The wind on her bare ass. The precisely unyielding pressure of Bucky's metal fingers wedged deep into her most delicate places, stoking the fire that burned low in her core to greater and greater heights. And Steve wantonly stroking himself as he watched them. And they were all clearly egged on by the fact that Bucky had given her the choice of metal or flesh and she'd chosen the more daring… more arousing option. All that metal pushing into her...

"You two enjoying this?" She barely had enough air to form the words, but she had to rib them. Bucky was starting to pant a little as he watched her. He was probably wanting to touch himself as well, but he hadn't given in yet. And she could hear the sounds Steve was making too. He was getting off on this as much as she and Bucky were.

"Fuck, Nat. You look so good." Steve said, the last word twisted into a little groan.

"She does look so nice with my fingers in her, doesn't she?" Bucky said, his voice rough and syrupy sweet. "Are you close, sweetheart?"

A thin whine was their only answer. Natasha was close. So close, and their shameless commentary only pushed her closer. But somehow, despite the metal, the pressure was still not quite enough. He was holding out on her. He could crush bones with that hand but he could also keep her at the edge of orgasm for days with it. 

"Bucky…" His name might as well have been the word "please."

Bucky folded himself down over her back, his other arm holding her up against him. "I've got you." he whispered. "Come around my hand. The one you chose."

He gave one last drag of those metal fingers and just the slightest shift of pressure on her clit with his thumb. Natasha felt the edge of one of the metal plates catch against the sensitive little nub of flesh and that was it. All the tightness and heat gathered in her core came unspooled all at once. Natasha spilled forward onto her elbows, arching her back and working herself on his fingers as a liquid warmth wicked out under her skin. Hotter than his breath. Hotter than the sun. Pushing her blood over to the boiling point as she drove herself down on his hand again and again.

"There you go." Bucky praised, as he slipped his fingers out and stroked them over the lips of her pussy, smearing her slickness around and making her moan at the overstimulation. "That what you wanted?"

She nodded, swallowing to wet her throat dried out from all her panting.

"My turn?" He asked, once she'd heaved a few more steady breaths. "Steve's ah… not done sketching yet.

She nodded again, the motion clumsy. "How do you want me?"

Bucky gave a sweetly cocky toss of his hair. "What do you think, Steve? Just like this?"

Natasha turned her head and peeked at Steve over her elbow. He looked utterly overwhelmed and debauched with his legs spread as wide as the chair would allow. His shorts barely seemed able to contain his erection, and he was shamelessly grinding his length against the heel of his hand. Not just caressing, but gripping himself and canting his hips up to get more friction.

"Yeah, just like this." Bucky answered himself when Steve didn't seem capable. He popped the button on his low-slung jeans and reached through the fly to pull out his cock. He let Steve get a good look at him idly stroking himself, rubbing Natasha's wetness along his length before sliding home in a single unobstructed thrust. 

All the air in Natasha's lungs was chased out at the welcome intrusion. She buried her hands in her hair and her face in the cushion and let loose a delicious moan, echoed in kind by Bucky when he bottomed out. God, this would never get old… Bucky mounting up on her all cocksure and deliberate, even though he was already starting to fray at the seams. It was delightful. Delicious. And it would never get old.

Once he was seated inside her, she felt his metal hand come up to spread across her collarbones, pulling her back against him and turning her head towards Steve. "Let him see you, sweetheart. We don't want to ruin his drawing, now do we?" 

Natasha forced her eyes open again to stare at Steve as he slouched in his chair. His legs were slung apart to make room for his cock, and he'd finally given in and opened the front of his jeans. His fingers idly stroked his swollen length through his underwear which had gone transparent with wetness. Natasha licked her lips at the sight and wriggled back against Bucky in hopes of gaining a little more friction. But the effort was in vain. He wanted to keep teasing her a bit longer first.

"I'm gonna get him off next." Bucky announced, holding her so tight against him that she was fairly certain her bones were creaking. "After I've come inside you, I'm going to suck him until he comes down my throat."

Natasha curled her spine back in wordless invitation at that, and Bucky mercifully took the hint. He pushed her back down onto her hands, setting his thumbs into the sweet little dimples just above the handsome curve of her ass. He started moving again, first in shallow little thrusts that were smooth as glass to work the slickness of her body along his fat length. Only then did he start slowly building a rhythm that began to snap at the apex of every thrust. The swing swayed with their activity, but he seemed to catch the swell of every movement, pulling her back onto his length with more and more force.

It didn't take Natasha long. And it didn't take Bucky long either once she tipped past the edge. Natasha felt another crackling wave of perfectly pressurized pleasure begin to eat its way up her spine like an oncoming bolt of lightning, and she had long enough to draw a full breath before it slammed through her, sending her pulse roaring up into her ears and a scream of pleasure billowing from her open mouth. And her second orgasm fairly wrung Bucky's own climax out of him. She clutched up so tight and arched to take him so perfectly that all he could do was bury his length inside her as his vision turned white. He might've said her name or just groaned. It didn't matter. Both their ears were ringing.

Together they hung in that moment for a handful of heaving breaths before they began to melt back down onto the swing. Natasha sagged back onto the cushions, Bucky idly and shakily petting her along the flat of her lower back as she went. 

"God, you're so good, Nat." he praised, his spent cock slipping out of her as he collapsed to his side next to her. 

"Mmm… you're not so bad yourself, котенок." She said, her words slurring slightly as she wriggled around on the swing, basking in the sun and her own pleasure in equal measure.

Bucky stripped out of his sweaty shirt and rolled onto his back, shamelessly stretching to show off his physique in the brilliant sunshine. He cast a casual glance over at Steve to find him still stroking his cock with one thumb, sketch pad all but forgotten.

"You give up on drawing there, Rogers?" Bucky asked, arching an eyebrow as he tucked himself back into his jeans.

"Got distracted." came the rather choked reply.

"Well, why don't you come be distracted over here." Bucky said, licking his well-bitten lips for emphasis. 

Steve didn't need to be told twice. He pulled himself out of the chair, tugging his shirt over his head as he crossed to them. He dropped to his hands and knees directly over Bucky, roughly melding their mouths together. Bucky's hands were inside his pants instantly, pulling out Steve's ruddy, leaking cock and pumping it loosely in his right fist as his left gently cradled his balls.

"Fuck." Steve swore against Bucky's open mouth.

"Up here Rogers." Bucky said, shimmying down the swing just a little so Steve could grab the back and lean over him. Bucky sucked him down without preamble. Just one long pull of his mouth and a pointed swallow. Steve cried out, the wood on the back of the swing creaking dangerously in his grip.

Natasha moaned at the sight, and as wrung out as she was, she couldn't resist letting her fingers disappear up her skirt to play in the mess Bucky had left behind. She was so wet from two orgasms and all the come Bucky had pumped into her that her body just ate up two fingers as she plunged them inside herself.

Bucky pulled off Steve's cock when he heard the sounds she was making. "Romanoff, you tease." he said hazily before letting his catlike tongue flick out to lick a bead of wetness from the tip of Steve's cock. "If you're going to play with yourself, at least let him get a good look.

Natasha cut them both the wickedest of smirks before hitching herself up on the swing and hiking up her skirt. Bucky swallowed Steve down again just as her fingers disappeared into her pussy.

"Fuck…" Steve swore again, his head dropping back as both sight and sensation overwhelmed him.

"I'm so wet, Steve." Natasha said in her most tempting voice. It was a little theatrical truth be told. A little over the top. If Steve's cock hadn't been halfway down Bucky's throat, he probably would have laughed at the display. But as it was, he was almost completely overwhelmed. He reached out blindly, one hand slipping up her inner thigh as he braced himself on the back of the swing. And Natasha eagerly guided his fingers into her pussy, hissing as he breached her. His fingers were thicker than hers, and she was a little swollen from the pounding Bucky had given her. But she was still so messy and slick that her body just ate him up.

"You're greedy today." Steve said, his ribbing losing much of its edge in the wanton rasp of his voice.

"Can you blame me?" Natasha shot back, equally as breathless as she gripped his elbow and rode his hand. 

Steve just shook his head, turning his attention momentarily back to Bucky who was staring up at him through his dark lashes. And when he had Steve's attention, he sucked and swallowed hard, his throat visibly gripping up around Steve's cockhead and making him moan.

There was no more teasing after that. Just quiet groans and hisses of pleasure as they all worked themselves and each other in tandem, like a luscious machine. They caught a rhythm together, set mostly by Bucky's insistent sucking, that drove them up and up and up to a shared climax's edge.

Then Bucky hummed around Steve's cock and that sent him spiraling down over the edge. His mouth dropped open and he gave them most beautiful groan that was half Bucky's name and half a wordless exclamation of pleasure. And as Natasha watched Bucky swallow and swallow and swallow around Steve's spasming cock, she drove herself down onto Steve's fingers and clutched up tight around him as her own orgasm rippled out through her body like a heatwave.

Steve clumsily crawled across the swing and let himself fall down behind Natasha so that she was bracketed between him and Bucky. The breeze had picked up again, and it rocked the swing and cooled their sweat as their shared aftershocks fizzed and fizzled. 

"Mmm… that was new." Natasha said rather drowsily.

"What was new?" Bucky asked, wiping the corner of his mouth with the ball of his thumb.

"Fucking on the swing."

"I certainly enjoyed it." Steve said. "Both watching and participating."

"You ruined my tan though." Natasha pouted.

"You ruined my sketch session." Steve retorted, earning him a smack on the shoulder.

"I didn't realize sketching was more fun than me swallowing your cock." Bucky cut in, propping himself up on his elbow to wink at Steve. "I'll remember that in future."

"You're a punk." was all Steve had to shoot back with. "You've certainly never been one to resist when you want it."

"He must be rubbing off on me then." Natasha said. "I'll have to make at least one of you idiots come with me if I decide to take Fury up on his offer. I have to admit you've spoiled me."

"That mean you're thinking about joining back up with him?" Steve asked, one arm falling across both Natasha and Bucky.

Natasha nodded without saying anything, opting to chew on her lip rather than elaborate. Last week, Fury had contacted her with an offer of a place on a new Avengers-ish team he was putting together. So far he had that kid Peter Parker along with Scott and Hope Lang. He was obviously looking to put some more seasoned blood in the mix. Someone to act as a mentor.

"What do you think I should do?" she said stretching out on her back so she could look both Steve and Bucky in the eye.

"Whatever makes you happy." Came Steve's too quick answer.

That earned him an equally quick elbow to the ribs from Natasha. "Besides that, Steve."

"What do you mean 'besides that?' You should do what you want to do. Full stop."

"That's just it. I don't know."

"What's Fury's idea exactly?" Bucky asked cocking his head as it rested on his folded elbows. "What does he see you doing?"

Her mouth bunched up as she thought. "Fury… his 'ideas' are always kind of malleable."

"Well… part of you wants to do it, or you would've said no outright." Bucky pointed out sagely.

"Yeah." she said, a little guilt soaking into her tone.

"So what's the hang up?"

"Look around you, man." She said throwing her arm out towards the fields of rich green that rolled away from them. Towards the perfect vault of the blue sky. Towards the maple tree whose shade was starting to stretch out far enough to touch their toes. To the house, and the swing, and to their tangled pile of limbs. "This is paradise. This is _my_ paradise. If I were going to choose a heaven, this would be it."

"You're not dead yet, Natasha." Steve said, dropping his nose down to brush against her hairline.

"I know… but…" She sighed, feeling her ribs expand and push against her lovers as she encouraged them to settle in closer. "I think he wants me to help him rebuild the Avengers with the new blood we've got in the game now and the new knowledge about what's out… there." she waved a hand vaguely upwards. "We've still got the same problems we did before Thanos. And thankfully those problems now have some perspective. And we have some bigger guns. But still. Problems are problems. Nick used to tell me that trouble always comes around."

"Do you think he wants you in the field?" Bucky asked.

"I don't know." she answered with a little shake of her head.

"Do _you_ want to go back in the field?" was his next question.

"I don't know." she repeated, biting her lip before adding. "I don't… think so?"

"But…" Bucky prompted.

"But the world's still got the same problems. And when I was on my game… working for the right people? I wasn't a half-bad solution to a lot of those problems."

"But…" he urged again.

Natasha let her head drop back against the pillow so she could stare up at the cottony clouds overhead as she tried to parse through her thoughts. "But I would feel strange in the field without you guys. And without Clint. But I'd feel strange just watching it all on the news too. But then again, it's like I said. Who would want to leave this?"

"You. Possibly. In about another month or so." Steve replied his tone careful but pointed.

"If that." Bucky chimed in.

Natasha snorted but had to agree. At least a little.

They all lay in companionable quiet, listening to the mockingbirds as they turned it all over in their minds. The wind pushed the swing, the rocking settling them closer together to share lazy kisses and touches in the sunshine.

"What if…" Natasha started after a moment, making both of them sit up again to hear her out. "What if I split the difference?"

"What do you mean?" Steve asked, hooking a loosened lock of her hair over her shoulder.

"What if I didn't go back in the field, but worked in… I don't know. An advisory role for Fury and the new Avengers. Maybe… maybe work as a handler? Like…"

"Like Phil." Steve finished for her.

She nodded, looking almost giddily frightened at the idea. "Yeah… yeah… I mean… would I be any good at it, you think?"

Steve blinked at her, a smile working its way slowly across his lips. "You ran the Avengers facility by yourself for five years while I had my head up my ass in Brooklyn." he told her. "Plus, I can think of no better example to follow than that of Phil Coulson. I didn't know him well, but I could tell it was always people with him. And it always was with you too."

"Fury always said people like Phil were the reason SHIELD worked." Natasha said, her eyes going a little distant as she considered the idea more closely.

"Fury was smart when he wasn't trying to be smarter than himself." Steve said rather wisely.

"Yeah… yeah that's… maybe that's what I'll do." Natasha said after a moment, a smile kindling on her lips and in her eyes. "It might… have me away from here a little bit. Especially as we get started."

But to that Steve just shrugged. "I figured it would only be a matter of time before Fury tried to have a do-over of the Avengers. So I'd considered offering to help train up the next crop of them. So you might not be the only one."

"Yeah, you didn't do too bad with Wanda and all of them after Ultron."

" _We_ didn't do too bad." he corrected, bumping his nose against hers before leaning in for a kiss. "Plus I've been giving some serious thought to passing the shield off to Sam. I think it would suit him. Better than it ever suited me. But I don't want to leave him to flounder either."

Bucky snorted. "Well, I don't want to be left out, so let Fury know I'm in too. They'll need a few new marksmen if Clint and I are retiring."

"And here I thought we were actually going to retire." Natasha said with a laugh drawing their arms tight around her.

"I think we learned from Clint about how well that works." Steve pointed out. 

Natasha gave a small cough of dry laughter. "You are not wrong about that."

"But no one's tried to "split the difference" as you said." Steve pointed out. "Maybe this will work out for the better."

A soft chime went off, coming from somewhere in the house.

"That'll be dinner." Bucky said, levering himself up off the swing. "Give me… fifteen minutes and we'll be ready to eat. Do we wanna eat out here?"

"Yeah." Natasha said giving a lazy stretch. "I'm not ready to go inside yet."

"Your legs just don't work yet." Bucky shot back, pecking her on the lips as he rolled out of the swing. "You're fooling no one." His jab at her was somewhat undercut by the fact that his knees didn't seem to be cooperating too well either.

Steve spooned up behind Natasha as they watched him head back inside, both of them giggling a little at his obvious post-sex gait.

"If you'd told me ten years ago that the Winter Soldier was going to cook me dinner in a farmhouse I shared with him and Captain America after we'd all three fucked on a porch swing the size of a Buick, I would have laughed in your face." Natasha said.

"Hey, you're not the only one who's shocking their past self." Steve replied, and Natasha could hear the smile in his voice.

"Thanks for the advice, by the way." She said, nosing along his jaw. "About Fury. You're probably right, just like always."

"Almost always." He replied, leaning down to catch her mouth with his. "Just calling the truth like I see it. You know I'm always honest."

"Yeah, yeah… something something not all things to all people?"

A smile pulled at Steve's rosy lips as he curled around Natasha to kiss the cap of her shoulder and bury his face in her russet hair. "Yeah." He replied. "Something something."

***

_We're neither pure, nor wise, nor good._  
_We'll do the best we know._  
_We'll build our house and chop our wood_  
_And make our garden grow._  
_And make our garden grow!_

***

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So... this is the end of the line for this series. It is by no means the last fic I'll publish for it. I've already got a multi-chapter fic set during the Endgame five year gap that's going to start publishing August 5. But this is where this story ends. At least for now. Never say never... I don't know what Phase 4 and beyond will bring for the MCU, but for now I'm going to leave them here.
> 
> If you want to keep up with me and my writing, come follow me over on Tumblr at @littlethingwithfeathers.
> 
> Thank you all again for your amazing support and kindness! I hope you like what's coming next for this series. This may be the end, but I'm far from finished.
> 
> Cheers and much love!

**Author's Note:**

> Come flail at me about Marvel, Agents of SHIELD, Hannibal, Lord of the Rings... and a whole host of other stuff over on Tumblr at @littlethingwithfeathers. I'd love to chat with you!


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